Senior Vice President and GM of Automotive & Cloud Computing of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., Qualcomm
Stellantis, Qualcomm Expand Partnership for Vehicle Tech
Qualcomm's head of Automotive, Robotics and IoT Businesses Nakul Duggal said that the new vehicle technology partnership the semiconductor company announced with Stellantis will allow the automaker to modernize technology across the board and move fast as the automation and self-driving landscape grows. Duggal said that the automotive industry is moving quickly and he sees more intelligent cars becoming out over the next few years.
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About Nakul Duggal
Nakul Duggal, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Automotive & Cloud Computing at Qualcomm, has been active in discussing the company's strategy around physical AI, automotive technology, and robotics. In a March 2026 interview with NEURA Robotics, Duggal said that the idea of automating what humans do in a heterogeneous physical environment is a "new concept" that is "starting to get explored very rapidly." He stated that "the future will not be decided on screens" but "built in the physical world through powerful partnerships." At Qualcomm's Investor Day in June 2026, Duggal described physical AI as "the next great computing wave" that runs on the edge, not in the cloud, and said the addressable market for automotive, industrial, and robotics is expected to grow from $300 billion to over a trillion dollars within the next decade, with robotics becoming a very large segment. In the automotive sector, Duggal announced a partnership with Stellantis in May 2026, stating that Qualcomm will deploy its digital chassis platform across all of Stellantis's brands starting in model year 2028, covering connectivity, in-cabin experience, and self-driving software. He noted that Qualcomm's automotive business has grown at about 25% annually and is expected to exit fiscal 2026 at $6 billion in annualized revenue. At the Qualcomm Auto Summit in June 2026, Duggal explained that the company decided three years ago to "overdimension the silicon" and build a mixed-critical architecture that allows cockpit and ADAS systems to run on the same platform, calling this approach "Flex." He also said the industry is moving from software-defined vehicles to AI-defined vehicles.
Transcript (15 segments)
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Tim0:00
Tell us about this partnership, and I want you to kind of go into exactly what this means by expanding it for those who understand your world, and maybe for those smart investors who don't totally understand it. Break it down for us.
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Nakul Duggal0:13
Thank you, Carl. Thank you, Tim. Great to be with you. Yeah, you know, our business in automotive has been on a tear over the last many years. We are going to exit at $6 billion of annualized revenue, which has grown at 25% over the last six years. The partnership with Stellantis is actually one of a kind. We've been building for the digital future of cars for a number of years, and physically, as you know, it is coming into every single vehicle. The digital chassis that we build essentially allows an automaker to be able to modernize all of their vehicles across the board, from connectivity to the in-cabin experience to the driving experience of a vehicle. And this partnership with Antonio at Stellantis is a one of a kind. This essentially means we get to deploy starting in model year '28 across all of their platforms, from Chryslers to Fiats to Dodge to the Peugeot brands, the Citroen brands across every global footprint. The Stellantis vehicles are deployed in every market outside of China. An entire fleet of products. This is a new change in the way Stellantis is developing their vehicles. It's one single architecture that gets homogenized so that you can move fast. You can become a software company, working with partners across the board to be able to bring self-driving capability into every single cabin and, of course, connected vehicles. And, you know, we've been building this for really the entire industry over the last many years, and this is what we're going to do with Stellantis.
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Tim1:56
So if somebody buys a Stellantis after that model year, any vehicle across the Stellantis portfolio, as you mentioned, after that model year, will Snapdragon technology, this technology that you are talking about right now, be included in that vehicle?
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Nakul Duggal2:07
That's right. That's right. So we're already a supplier for them. And this is now going to happen across ADAS, cockpit, and telematics. So what does that mean for the driver experience? You know, you're starting to now see AI essentially come to the fore, especially for platforms like a car, which is a physical platform. It's your daily driver. It's something that you spend a lot of time in. And bringing AI into the cabin experience essentially allows your personal space to be completely transformed. We've been preparing for this with the entire ecosystem. We've been working with this with companies like Google, with, of course, our automotive suppliers and partners and Snapdragon. Cockpits are now AI ready. That means the experience that you will have in your in-car cabin experience will be no different than what you're starting to see on your smartphone. You can have a conversational experience with your car. It shops for you. It sets up appointments, it entertains you. That experience in your car changes the entire way that consumers will engage with the vehicle. And then the same thing extends over to the driving experience. So as you are starting to see technology like FSD get deployed very broadly, this is also something that's part of the partnership that we've built with Stellantis, where we will power their self-driving stacks along with our silicon. And this essentially is a brand new type of product that starts to get deployed starting '28.
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Tim3:30
Nakul, is it an expansion? So you guys were already involved, right? In terms of not only kind of the AI or experience that sounds like it's taking it to another level, but you were already involved in kind of mechanics, if you will, or the inner workings with Stellantis. Is that correct?
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Nakul Duggal3:49
You know, we've been working with both Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot for a number of years. I think this big shift is really as the technology transforms, with AI becoming such a central part of the transformation of the car. This allows us to be able to help Stellantis move to this new architecture and to do this across the board. You know, as you know, the car industry is complex, a lot of different architectures. This is going to be a one of a kind change, because this is one common, harmonized architecture across the entire global fleet of vehicles. So any change that is made brings that experience to every tier of vehicle deployed across any part of the world. And that is what makes this partnership very unique.
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Tim4:33
Is it exclusive? I know it's an expansion of the partnership. Is it exclusive, or are there other companies, AI or tech, that are doing similar parts?
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Nakul Duggal4:41
This is a partnership between Stellantis and Qualcomm on all of the silicon and all of the self-driving software capability, and of course, all the connectivity that we're building. So it is something that we are building. We are the ones that are their dedicated supplier for this next generation.
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Tim4:57
Why expand it and why now? And talk to us about the financial opportunity for what it means for Qualcomm.
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Nakul Duggal5:06
You know, for us, we've been growing our business in automotive, actually, by looking at the car architecture and thinking about it in the context of what does the digital product mean for a car? And to do that, you really have to be able to envision what type of technologies a car is going to deploy. It has now become very central, both for driving but now also in-car gaming experiences. You have to focus on every tier of vehicle that you have to supply to. You have to focus on the global nature of this business in that this is 90 million cars produced all over the world. Automakers are designing for a software product. We are growing our business. We've been growing at about 25% plus over the last many years. And we really see automotive as this definition of what a physical product looks like. And, you know, so far, it's been going great. We are super happy with the way that the business is going. We're going to share more at the Investor Day that we have coming up in June. We will talk a lot about what we are doing in automotive and, of course, other areas. We've done a lot of automotive for a lot of years with a lot of different partners, of course, apart from just Stellantis.
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Tim6:15
You're working with Chinese EV makers as well, Toyota, Honda, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, among others. Since you have such a good view on what you are calling an embodiment of physical AI, what's a realistic timeframe for you to tell us that we as drivers will be removed completely from the equation when it comes to this technology?
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Nakul Duggal6:36
You know, I would say that the driver completely removed is probably much farther out because this is, at the end of the day, a safety product. But I think that the car essentially taking over for a number of scenarios where the driver is involved but perhaps not deeply engaged, that is upon us now. And maybe let me describe it like this. I think the rate at which AI is accelerating, even I would say in the last 12 months, the capabilities of the models, what they can do both for conversational AI, you know, the human-facing AI, but then also the machine and the physical AI. The car is probably one of these products, one of these, you know, parts of our life that is so central to where you spend time, your personal time, your time with family. It is a global product. You will start to see, I would say, in the next two years, AI entering the digital cabin and cars becoming much more intelligent in terms of the way that they are driven. This will drastically accelerate because all of the other pieces are in place. The silicon, the SoCs, the silicon is in place. We've been building that for a number of years. We have standardized the architectures. We have made them such that they can be applied to really any type of vehicle. We are obviously doing this globally. This is not specific to any region. So this acceleration is something that every automaker has been waiting for. And I think the Stellantis deal is a reflection of how quickly can automakers really leapfrog a legacy way of working, a legacy way of thinking, and just embrace what is bound to happen. And this deal for us was actually, you know, an indicator of how fast this is actually coming. I would expect by '28 you will start to see this get deployed across multiple parts in the Western world.
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Tim8:27
Yeah. We're going to start soon calling it a car. I think we're going to call it, I don't know, we're going to have to come up with some other name, because if you think about the amount of technology that are in our vehicles today, it's just pretty astounding. I mean, a lot of observers have said you have to think about Chinese EVs as smartphones on wheels. Yeah. But like, I don't know if we're there. Yeah, it's hard for me as a New Yorker who's like, doesn't have a new car, you know, doesn't spend any time in cars to relate. My car is in full self-driving and it's old. It's more than ten years old, but you can literally take your hands off the wheel and it drives itself like that. The systems have been... Are you sure? It tells me to put my hands back on it after about 40 seconds, but it is pretty amazing.
Nakul, what we're seeing and what I'm wondering about in terms of, I was just looking at the page on the Bloomberg, you guys are at least the forecast that we have, I guess from the street, and guidance looking at over $42 billion in revenue for you folks this year when you wrap up the fiscal. But I'm just thinking, I think you guys shared some numbers that in the second quarter of this year, you guys clocked $1.33 billion in automotive segment revenue. How much more could it be as a result of deals like that, that this becomes maybe a bigger part of your top line? And just forgive me about 40, 45 seconds here.
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Nakul Duggal9:43
I think it's a great question. Look, I think we've been preparing for the way that this business is growing. I think this deal that you saw is an indication of the market saying, hey, we are now ready to really scale up. I would say that the car becoming a digital product, both on the self-driving side and the cabin, is going to happen across the board, and every automaker is now essentially waiting to figure out how do they accelerate that. Even going 25%, I think we see similar trajectories continuing, certainly in the near future.