Qualcomm CEO Sees Robotics as the 'Next Big Wave of AI'

Yes, look, we're incredibly excited, but this is a new chapter, I think, of the Qualcomm expansion and diversification. I think we're going to robotics. We like robotics a lot because by definition it is an edge AI problem to solve. No different than what we did in automotive. You cannot put a server in a robot. You need that battery life, you need a lot of integration of sensors. And physical AI is a massive opportunity and it's an opportunity. So as we look at this transition of Qualcomm into a new industry, we went to automotive, to PC, to industrial, to data center, now robotics, this is that next opportunity. We actually have a number of robots here at our booth at CES demonstrating training humanoid industrial. I think we started the year working with some great companies, German Kuka, Fieger, A.I., and I think it's going to be a great opportunity in robotics. It's perfect for you to have high performance computing and low power. Connectivity is an edge problem. And I think it's going to be the next big wave of physical AI.

Look, AI, the way we think about this is thanks to you. You didn't what possible to do with a robot. You can do it right now using AI. I think industrial robot is the big largest opportunity that we see in front of us and it's probably starting as early as 2026 when you train or use AI to train a robot on one given task. It's a very well defined problem. And you can do this and you put into production. Consumer robot, the one that is going to be in your house and do everything for you, is going to take a little bit of time. But it's going to happen and it's going to be a big opportunity. I like to do this parallel with what we saw with automotive. When we start talking about autonomous cars, a lot of companies went in and said, 'We're just going to get that for autonomous robotaxi.' But until you get there, you can do assisted driving to every car on the road, assuming that the driver is there to pick it up. And we've seen level two, level three, highway autopilot. That's what we're doing. I think the same parallel applies to robotics. First, you have a lot of enterprise and industrial applications. We see companies, for example, in retail at night, robot go to the aisles of the supermarket and we start to shelves. Something very simple. That opportunity is happening right now. Over time, we're going to have the domestic robot that would do everything for you.

Okay, the most important thing is to really understand what's happening. Car becomes a digital product. So from Qualcomm, we're going to have a slightly different perspective. We think that the most important part of the car digital experience is the digital cockpit, because the digital cockpit became a new computing surface, like your phone is a computing surface, the laptops, the computing surface, now the car. And when you think about AI coming into the car, agentic experiences that is very natural, voice is very natural. That's going to happen to the cockpit today. I think we just announced we have now 75 million cars now on the road with the Qualcomm digital cockpit. Our pipeline is transforming into revenue and we're designing with virtually every car company using the digital cockpit. The next part is what's happening in autonomy. And in autonomy, you have this transition. You can bring safety and reduce accidents. You can bring assisted driving to every car, starting with level two all the way up, and then you're going to have full autonomy. So we have been actually driving the processor for this assisted driving. And now of a stack that we develop with BMW, we launch it's available. People are testing the car here at CES and it is available to every OEM to have a system driving in every car, every car model. And eventually you're going to get in a couple of years to fully autonomous cars. Yes. I think Tesla is probably ahead. I'll say the other solutions are a couple years out but you're going to get to it. I think fully autonomous cars, but you're going to have some level of autonomy in every single car.