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Cristiano Amon
Chief Executive Officer, President & Director, Qualcomm Inc

FULL KEYNOTE SPEECH: Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon Unveils AI Future at COMPUTEX Taiwan | AI14

📅 Jun 01, 2026 DWS News 51 MIN 12 SEGMENTS · 3 SPEAKERS
WATCH NOW: Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon takes the stage at Computex 2026 in Taipei, Taiwan, delivering a highly ...

What Cristiano Amon said

Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.

Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm's CEO, opened his Computex keynote by thanking Taiwan partners, especially TSMC, and framing the presentation as about the ecosystem, not Qualcomm. He declared 2026 'the year of agents,' arguing that AI agents will shift the center of digital life from the phone to the agent itself, making devices mere endpoints. He stressed that current devices are not designed for agentic AI, which requires always-on operation, context, and power efficiency. He outlined device categories: phones, PCs, cars, and robotics, with cars having two layers of intelligence (cockpit and physical AI). He projected token demand growth from 10,000 tokens per task in conversational AI to 1 million in agentic AI, a 100x increase, and global token demand rising from 31.7 billion to 1.27 trillion tokens per 10 seconds by 2030. He demonstrated distributed AI savings: 60% lower cost in coding and 4x lower cost in webpage creation. He announced the new data center product brand 'Dragonfly' and an investor day on June 24.

Key takeaways

  1. 2026 is 'the year of agents,' with AI agents becoming the center of digital life, making devices endpoints.
  2. Token demand per task grows 100x from conversational (10,000) to agentic (1 million) AI.
  3. Global token demand per 10 seconds will rise from 31.7 billion in 2026 to 1.27 trillion in 2030, a 40x increase.
  4. Distributed AI can cut coding token costs by 60% and webpage creation costs by 4x.
  5. Qualcomm announced 'Dragonfly' as the brand for its data center products, with more details at the June 24 investor day.

Numbers and commitments

FigureWhat it refers toTypeAt
6 billion number of phones today metric 6:22
2 billion number of personal AI devices (wearables) metric 6:22
2 billion number of PCs metric 6:22
10,000 tokens tokens per task for level one conversational AI metric 33:41
100,000 tokens tokens per task for level two reasoning AI metric 33:41
1 million tokens tokens per task for level three agentic AI metric 33:41
31.7 billion tokens global token demand per 10 seconds in 2026 metric 33:41
1.27 trillion tokens projected global token demand per 10 seconds in 2030 metric 33:41
June 24 date of Qualcomm investor day timeline 49:15

Chapters

  1. 0:00Opening and thanks to partners
  2. 6:22Agents as the new center of digital life
  3. 26:36AI in cars and robotics
  4. 33:41Token demand growth and distributed AI
  5. 49:15Dragonfly data center brand and investor day
Host 0:08 ↗
Ladies and gentlemen, as we move into our keynote program, I'm pleased to welcome back a familiar face, a good friend. For the third consecutive year, Cristiano Amon has chosen Computex as the stage to share Qualcomm's vision with the world. The continuity speaks for itself. This year, everything Qualcomm has been building toward—AI at the edge, intelligent devices, the connected world—is becoming reality. There is no better person to open our keynote series. But first, please turn your attention to the screen for a special opening from Qualcomm.
Narrator 1:05 ↗
We step into a world where AI feels less like a tool... Good morning. Here's your daily brief... And more like a teammate... It's day five of strength training, the dreaded leg day... Okay, let's do it... Always ready. Always learning... You're approaching your personal best. Push yourself... Built to keep up with real life, not slow it down... Nice work... Intelligence that moves with you across the moments that make up your day. Working quietly in the background, so everything else feels easier in the foreground. And when the how is handled... Thanks... you get more freedom to focus on the why, more flow, more creativity, more time for what you care about. This Qualcomm technology adapts to you... Your meeting canceled, so I freed up your schedule. You mentioned needing a new shirt for the party this weekend. Want to pick one up on the way to the office?... Sounds good... Responding to your life, your needs, on your terms. It's more than just a helping hand. It's an extra set of eyes and ears that understands the world around you... I've prepared a few color matches with your wardrobe... It sees what you see... The white t-shirt would also go well with your tan jacket... Hears what you hear... I'll take both. Those shirts are selling well. I've drafted a social post to drive engagement and placed an additional order with the wholesaler... Technology that meets you where you are and takes you where you need to go... Your ride should be about 35 minutes today... Okay... I've summarized the latest product design feedback to review on the train... Great. Can you send me that photography podcast I mentioned earlier?... Done... A network of agents working around the clock to create a brighter future for everyone. This is intelligent computing everywhere driven by Qualcomm innovation, smarter, faster, more seamlessly connected. Transforming the devices you rely on into partners you trust. It's computing that never misses a moment... Looks good... So neither do you.
Host 4:04 ↗
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the president and CEO of Qualcomm, Cristiano Amon.
Cristiano Amon 4:27 ↗
Hello, everyone. Very, very happy to be here at Computex. This is a special time, I think, for Qualcomm, a special time for technology. And it's such an honor, I think, to be able to speak with you all here at Computex. So, thank you so much for being here. As I said, I think we are Qualcomm incredibly excited about the future. Are there some Qualcomm folks here in the room? All right. Thank you. Thank you so much. Before I start this presentation, this presentation is not about Qualcomm. It's not about Qualcomm. It's really at the end of the day, I think, you know, evolution of technology is really a combination of companies. Not one company is never responsible for everything. It's really about partnership. So, first thing I wanted to say a big thank you to all our Taiwan partners. First, all of our suppliers, all of our development partner, a special thank you to TSMC, which has been an incredible partner on this journey. So, thank you to our suppliers and our developers. And then, also a big thank you to the entire ecosystem and the partnerships and many of you, which are here today. Thank you so much. This is not about Qualcomm. This is all about you and an incredible ecosystem that is actually drives everything in technology with a wonderful partnership. Companies that are leaders in technology today, they are leaders because of those partnerships. So, thank you very much and thank you all for having me here as speaker to you.
Okay. We are incredibly excited because a lot of the things that we have been talking about it is really started to become real and it's very easy to see. I have one job today. One job today. And by the way, I won't talk about a data center. So, if you came here to hear about our data center project, I'll tell a little bit, but we'll talk about this at the end of the month. But I have one job today. I want you to understand how AI is going to evolve for all the devices because it's the new form of computing that is touching every single device. And if you walk out of this keynote today understanding what's going to happen to all the devices of the edge and how much we're excited about it, I have done my job. So, I'm going to do my best to tell you how this future is going to look like. It's very clear to us. We have conviction in what's going to happen and we're going to make it very concrete for you, but it's an incredibly exciting time for all of the computing technology and all the devices that we use every day and the ones we're going to use it. So, about 2 years ago, we talked about how AI will change the human-computer interface. And as a consequence, will change the architecture of all of our personal computing devices. And that is starting to become a reality in 2026. That's why we call it Qualcomm 2026 is the year of agents. And it's now how AI is really evolving and is going to get to incredible on a scale that is evolved from simply answering prompts and work as a tool that augments how we as humans work with our computers into something that can take action on their own. I'm going to give you some examples. I think what you see today in the screen. At home, you're going to have agents that's going to basically update everyone in your activity, in your schedule, all of the things that you need to do. At work will be with you and think about what are the projects that you need to do, what are the tasks that you need to do. It flags the decision and it's going to be working with you. And then in your personal life, will give you information that is relevant to you, all of the updates that you need, work with you on your schedule. Everything's going to be prioritized and it's going to be a little different. It's going to feel more autonomous. It's going to feel more personal. And it's going to feel like really a companion. And all of this is going to happen proactively across all of your devices. And if all that to be understood, we have to go back to a very basic element of this transition. We have been talking about this, right? Which is the phone today is at the center of your digital life. And I remember when I presented something similar like this when we talk about it at Snapdragon Summit. I actually talk about here at Computex. That the phone is at the center of a digital life and therefore everything is around the phone. It's the how we interact with the phone, with the OS and the applications, even the other wearable devices, they are around this phone ecosystem. But now this is different. Those agents become the center of your digital experience. So including the phone and the other devices, they now around the agent. It's not about an extension of the phone and in the digital ecosystem is no longer at the phone itself and the OS's and the applications. And what happened, those devices become end points for agents. And agents is not, they're not trapped. They're not attached to a single ecosystem. And everything that connects you with an agent becomes an end point for AI. And that's a very important change. Once you understand that change, you understand how the whole mobile industry is going to change. The things that we take for granted today are going to be different tomorrow. And there's one thing I can tell you coming from Qualcomm. I've been the company for 30 years. One thing is guaranteed, the mobile industry is not static. It changes all the time. So those end points for AI, I am going to talk about what is really the surface area. I'm going to remind you of what are the scale of those devices. There's about 6 billion phones today, 2 billion personal AI devices which is the evolution of wearables and that is exactly a small number when you think about those things as an end point of agents. 2 billion PCs, half a billion connected cars. And people will experience and interact with those agents on these devices. And as I said at the beginning, the role of this conversation today is help you understand the role of those devices at the edge for this next phase of AI. And we at Qualcomm we actually told you about those devices running AI before it was popular, but now it's very easy to see. So, once you understand the scale, one important message that I want to deliver to you is that today's device were not designed for those experiences. They're not. It will require a different kind of device when agentic AI becomes the number one AI function in our daily lives, especially for personal computing as we interact with those devices. All of those devices today, they have been built for actions initiated by the user, not by the agent. And I'll going to break that down for you. The agents are different. They operate at all the time. They carry context forward. They will orchestrate multiple tasks reliably and securely, but they are going to do that on your own, not necessarily with human intervention. That alone give you a glimpse how these devices are going to change and how the architecture of those devices are going to change. And when you think about that, the agent acts on intent. As you have now AI taking a role in the man-machine interface, you understand human intentions, will proactively understand the task that it needs to react with the human, will take a goal, will break it into several steps, will coordinate across systems, across data sets, your own data set that lives on the device, the data set that is unique to you on your personal graph, and the data set is going to be in the cloud. It plans, it executes, you verify, you will keep interacting it until the task is done. And that, by definition, changes the hardware with different kind of hardware to be able to do this because it's not just what is initiated by the user. The agent is going to be running on its own. It's also changed the operating system and changing the application. And I think that's the incredible opportunity that we have in computing across this entire surface area of devices, which are going to be upgraded for this age of AI. You need to be able to tightly integrate across all the compute domains. You have strict power and latency constraint. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of power. Think about your phone. If it is challenging to make your phone last all day with you operating it, what happens when you and the agent is operating it? That's an incredible engineering challenge for power and latency. Those devices needs to be able to support planning, reasoning, coordination across the system. And for that, you can start to understand how the compute is going to evolve. You need a very strong and power efficient CPU for the orchestration of tasks. I think the industry now understand importance of CPU for orchestration and where the orchestrator is going to run. You need very power efficient and high compute density of NPU and GPU to be able to run local models. One other thing that I'm going to do today is to show clearly how AI is going to be distributed across cloud and device. I almost feel that it's going to be so obvious that we're going to start talking about it. We're going to stop talking about cloud and edge because they're all going to be one system. And for that, you're going to need the computing power in those devices to do that on the NPU and in the GPU. You need to have sensor data. Context is super important. Without context, you can not have the agent to be useful and for you to be useful and be proactive. All of those things are going to be necessary as we think the next generation of devices for the agentic AI and an upgrade is truly coming. So, and it's not the same thing for every device. It is not. We know this at Qualcomm. In personal devices, that means all the intelligence very focused on sensors and context that matter to you, incredibly power efficient because you're going to carry, you are mobile by definition, you're going to carry with you, you need to have high-speed connectivity. In cars and robots, that means sustaining processing power on the most demanding condition and also independent of connectivity and cloud when you have to. And in the data center, inference will require incredible amount of scale, and I'll walk you through it when we think about the demand for tokens. And power efficiency is also going to matter there. I'm going to tell you something. For companies that have the benefit of being working in the mobile industry, the mobile industry for decades, you had a different growth rate of computing power and availability of energy. So, you have to come up with solutions that allow you to get all the computing power that you need with the available energy because the battery have to last all day and is limited in its size. That's also going to be true when you think about what's going to happen on the data center, but we'll tell you more about that at the end of the month. And that in itself is the Qualcomm advantage. Because we have been working with all of those devices at the edge, all of it. And especially the new Qualcomm that have the incredibly diversify, we are now have ability to build systems that are sub 2 mW from an earbud with micro power Wi-Fi that connect to an agent for personal AI audio device all the way to kilowatts of what's going to happen in the data center. And I think that is the incredible opportunity that we see for us and for our partners when all of those devices are going to change for this future of agentic AI. And for that, you need dedicated computing solution that scale all the way down to a sub mW device to a 2000 kilowatt. And that's an incredible opportunity, I think, that we have in front of us. Leading performance for what across smartphones, PC, automotive, computing, robots, and extending that to the data center, I think that's our mission, and that is the incredible opportunity. The last thing I'm going to tell you as we keep moving in the presentation. It is there is excitement about what's happening, especially on the PC side, that with all of those agentic AI. So, as we go down the presentation, I will come back to this. And I will come back to the phones, because I believe that what's going to happen on the phone is going to be a very good proxy of what could happen on PC and other devices. Behold their phone. So, I'm going to break this down for you across the different categories of devices. And I want to show you how those experiences are evolving. I want to make it less abstract and more concrete for you, because this is happening right now. So, I want to start with the devices that really powered by Snapdragon platforms. You will see agents now being deployed and starting to get scale across phones, PC, and this new category of personal AI devices. I would like you to watch a video. Let's run the video.
Narrator 21:03 ↗
Move... I'm having friends over tonight. My smart home devices start getting ready on their own... Core, search for the same item... Found the same suit for you... Ask Core to create a daily briefing for you. It can pull from things like your email, your calendar, your local files. A powerful CPU like a Snapdragon one just means all of this will run faster, more privately, and more efficiently... I have this setup running on my laptop powered by Snapdragon because its powerful CPU lets me run multi-agent workflows in parallel... It has a dedicated AI engine. I don't throttle on any long coding sessions... You just tell it what to do and it does it... Can I just get one item from box three?... Woo!... on their own doing things. And things. And... brush robots, industrial systems are going to be also significant end points for agentic AI. And in those systems, you have other requirements. Latency, safety are measured in milliseconds, in millimeters, every single watt matters.

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APA

Amon, C. (2026, June 1). FULL KEYNOTE SPEECH: Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon Unveils AI Future at COMPUTEX Taiwan | AI14 [Interview transcript]. DWS News. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/956723/

MLA

Cristiano Amon. "FULL KEYNOTE SPEECH: Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon Unveils AI Future at COMPUTEX Taiwan | AI14." DWS News, 1 Jun. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/956723/.

BibTeX
@misc{amon2026_956723,
  author       = {Cristiano Amon},
  title        = {FULL KEYNOTE SPEECH: Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon Unveils AI Future at COMPUTEX Taiwan | AI14},
  howpublished = {Interview transcript, DWS News. CEOInterviews.AI},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = {jun},
  url          = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/956723/},
  note         = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}