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Hey, our Bloomberg Tech team is there on the ground at the annual Consumer Tech summit known as CEES. Right now, Bloomberg Tech co host Caroline Hyde sitting down with Christiano Amman, CEO and President of Qualcom.
Caroline, take it away, Carol, thank you. It is a party vibe out here at CES and a man who knows all about music from his hometown in Brazil, you'll be able to cope with the noise level, Christiano. But you're part of not the noise, but the statements being made here at the moment robotics, when it comes to a future of autonomous driving, when it comes to physical AI, talk to us about robots. Where's your technology really leading the charge there?
Yes, Look, we're incredibly excited about this is a new chapter. I think of the Qualcom expansion and diversification. I think we're going to robotics. We like robotics a lot because, by definition, is an EDGEAI problem to solve, not different than what we did in automotive. You cannot put a server in a robot. You need battery life, you need a lot of integration, a sensors and physical AI is
a massive opportunity and it's an EDGAI opportunity. So as we look at this transition of qualcom into new industry, we went to automotive to PC to industrial to data center. Now robotics this is next opportunity. We actually have a number of robots here at our booth at CS demonstrating
training humanoids industrial. I think we started the year working with some of the you know, great companies German, Kuka, figure AI, and I think it's going to be a great opportunity and robotics it's perfect for you to have high performance computing and low power connectivity is an edge AI problem and I think it's going to be the next big wave of AI physical.
AI and how soon is that reality? Already we have robots in manufacturing and industrials, but how soon is it fully autonomous robots? How soon do we start to have the humanoid versions in our houses.
Look the way we think about this is things that you didn't well possible to do with a robot, you can do it right now use an AI. I think industrial robot is the big largest opportunity that we see in front of us, and it's probably started as early as twenty twenty six. When you 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. It's gonna 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 that 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 this full autonomou robotaxing. But until you get there, you can do assisted riving to every car in the road, assuming that the driver is there to pick it up.
And we've seen Adas level two, Level three Highway Highway autopilot. That's what we're doing. I think the same parallel applies to robotics. First, you have a lot of enterprise in the industrial applications. We see companies, for example, in retail at night, robot go to the aisles of the supermarket and restart the shelves, something very simple. That opportunity is happening right now. Over time, we're going to have the domestic robot that will do everything for you.
Okay, let's go to your car focus though, because your DNA is mobile. But then it has indeed gone to robotics. But also this is where you've dominated. Look, we've just had Jenson Wim on stage saying, hey, I'm getting into the world of autonomous driving platforms too. How do you see that ecosystem involving Okay.
The most important thing is to really understand what's happening car. Car becomes a digital product. So from Qualcom we're going to have a slightly different perspect 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 a computing service. 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're just announced we have now seventy five million cars now in the road with the call on digital cockpit. Our pipeline is transforming into revenue and we're designed in with virtually every car company using the digital cockpit. The next car is what's happening in autonomy. And in autonomy you have this transition you can bring
to bring safety and reduce accidents. You can bring assistem 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 with a stack that we develop with bmwe launch it's available. People are testing the car here at CES and he's available to every OEM to have assisted driving in every car, every car model, and eventually you're going to get in a couple of years
to our fully autonomous cars. Yes, I think Tesla is probably ahead. I will say the other solutions a couple of years out, but you're going to get to it. I think fully autonomous cars, but you're going to have out some level of autonomy in every single car.
And you talk about Tesla being ahead, like you know, Moscus said he's not losing sleep over Jensenwan coming after that piece of the pie. And of course they have a client relationship to who can win and how many players can win.
Look, there's gonna be different types of car ownership. Some people wanted to drive the car. Some people wanted to have an assisted driving, people want to not own a car, some people want to robotex It's a it's a big opportunity. I think there's going to be multiple players that are going to win. I feel the issue of fully autonomous cars, the biggest feature that you have to sell is safety. How safety, How safe is your solution is? And I
think those takes time and one of the advantages. Teslas have been doing this for longer, so they have a lot of miles or real word miles, not only simulation to perfect the solution.
But it's going to happen.
It's going to be a reality of many car companies in the next few years.
And of course you've got a strong relationship with Google when it comes to being within the auto as well in many ways. Take us there for where you see the next innovations. Robots were almost there, cars were already there. Everyone I'm seeing is getting excited about the wearables, the pennons, the jewelry. Where does quankom play in that, because that's an edge device.
Yes, this is another area of excitement for Qualcom because we are probably now willing to make a statement that is the evolution of mobile platform. Phones are not going anywhere. Phones are incredibly useful. They will continue to be useful in the same way that when the smartphone arrived, your
laptop didn't go anywhere. However, when you think about AI and agentic experiences, this AI agent that is with you all the time and you're gonna ask a question and you'll answer, will help you navigate, help you do your daily fan that's gonna happen with wearables. Humans already decided what they're gonna wear. They're gonna wear glasses and jewelry and watches and rings, and you can put an agent connect to it give you context because something you wear
all the time. So we're starting the immersions of those smart wearables personal AI devices. We're excited about it because this require for you to make something that is small, a lot of performance, low power. So every major AI company that is doing a device is designing with Callcom right now. We have redesign and some of those are being announced CS, some will be announced through of the year. But personal devices are the neo mobile platform.
Wow. Okay, So if that's the way we're going to be doing wearables, where is the future PCs? Because that was the first sort of broadening out and AIPCS has it really caught on and people wanting to go there. Is it more enterprise adoption versus a consumer adoption. Yes.
So the Microsoft just launched the new version of Windows with agents, and I think we've all been kind of waiting for this moment, and you're starting to see a lot of the SaaS companies there are being spent the past deck decade going to the cloud creating agents as well. So I think we're just at the beginning of the inflection point of AIPCS is more at an enterprise play than the consumer play, even though it will be part of a lot of consumer use cases, and I remain
optimistic about it. Our PC business were just started. We have about one hundred and fifty designs. Most of our designs is because people wanted to do a thin and light and multi day battery life. But now that you're going to put AI running all the time, that's where we're gonna shine of unplugged performance and it's gonna happen. I think it's gonna happen, and the enterprise boom of AI. You're going to see a lot of AIPCS associated what is happening on the data center as well.
So Christiana, for all those people out there who are like, this is a bubble, this is the real return on AI investment isn't coming yet. What do you say to that sort of critique?
Not for us. I think we're doing We're doing things on the edge, the stuff that humans are buying, and I think when we're going into the data center is for inference. But here's the answer to your question. Everybody's playing to win, right, so we've seen this movie before. Everybody's playing to win. Everybody's building capacity to win. Will everybody win? Probably not. There are gonna be few winners. And I think the way to think about this is maybe maybe in the short term you could argue that,
you know, maybe there's an overinvestment. I think it's a it's a natural consequence of everybody playing to win. But in the long run, I still believe AI is under hype. And the way I'll do the parallel for you. The Internet in the year two thousand was probably over hyped. But in the year two thousand, when people thought what the Internet would be today was a fraction, It's much bigger than what they thought it would be, and I think AI is going to be the same thing.
Christiana Aman so great to get your ultimism and here right on the floor of CS