Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon on the new world of AI agents

Imagine this: you’re wearing a pair of glasses with a built-in camera and a visual display.

You’re walking down the road and you remember you need to make a reservation at a restaurant. Instead of using your smartphone to research recommended spots, you talk to your digital assistant who manages to get it done, across various apps, and sends you a booking confirmation.

This is the new world of AI agents across new types of gadgets envisioned by Cristiano Amon, the CEO of Qualcomm, a chip company that lives at the heart of many consumer devices. 

The example I provided involves the use of several apps like a restaurant booking app, payment service and email for the confirmation. An agent will be to coordinate across all of these, Amon told me on The Tech Download podcast.

Apps are “not dead,” he said — “but apps are going to change.”

“Those agents are going to be the new app,” he added.

I’ve spoken to Amon over the years about the changing nature of our smartphones which have become more advanced, as they can now fold and feature very powerful cameras. 

While many companies have attempted to create digital assistants — from Apple with Siri to Samsung with Bixby — they’ve yet to fully live up to their promise. With ever advancing AI models, these digital assistants are now getting more capable.

That also means the devices that power our digital lives can change. 

 “The phone is around the agent. The new classes of devices … are going to be around the agent as well,” Amon told me.

These shifts could also spark a new wave of devices. 

Amon said Qualcomm is working on over 40 different designs of AI gadgets. These include jewelry, earbuds with cameras, pins and watches.

“The principle is something that you wear, something [that] is with you all the time, something that can see the world around you, so you have context and have the ability for you to access an agent and talk to the agent,” Amon said.

But for now, he’s most bullish on smart glasses and expects they could eventually be as big as the smartphone. For context, there were more than 1.2 billion smartphones shipped last year. 

I’m excited to see how the agentic experience on consumer devices evolves. The potential use cases are vast, but the success might depend on striking the right balance between privacy and functionality. As agents become more pervasive, privacy concerns will be key. 

I’m also curious about what this will mean for the broader device landscape and whether the dominance of Apple and Samsung gets challenged or whether these companies will lead the wave of new AI gadgets.

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