Qualcomm bets the next big thing isn't a phone — announces chips for AI glasses and wearables

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon dropped a number on Tuesday that should make you rethink what your next gadget will look like: the chipmaker is working on over 40 different AI wearable devices. Think jewelry, earbuds with cameras, pins, and watches — the kind of stuff that could replace the smartphone in your pocket.

To back up that bet, Qualcomm announced two new products. First, Snapdragon Reality Elite, a platform for mixed-reality glasses that can run powerful AI directly on the device — no need to ping a cloud server. Second, the Scalable Turnkey AI-Ready Toolkit, or START — a bundle of hardware modules and software that lets companies build AI devices, starting with smart glasses.

The message from Amon is clear: the next major computing platform won't be a phone. Qualcomm wants to be the chip inside whatever replaces it.

Smart glasses have been a tough sell so far. Google Glass flopped a decade ago. Meta's Ray-Ban Stories sold modestly. But the tech has gotten smaller, cheaper, and more capable. Qualcomm is betting that on-device AI — processing your voice, your gestures, and your surroundings without lag — is the missing piece.

The Snapdragon Reality Elite platform is designed for exactly that. It's a system-on-chip that can handle AR and VR tasks while running AI models locally. That means glasses that can identify objects, translate speech in real time, or overlay directions onto the real world without needing a phone nearby.

START, meanwhile, is Qualcomm's attempt to make it easy for any hardware company to jump into the space. Instead of designing a custom circuit board from scratch, a company can grab Qualcomm's pre-built modules and focus on the software and design. That lowers the barrier to entry — and could flood the market with AI wearables faster than anyone expects.

Amon said Qualcomm is already working with partners on those 40-plus devices. He didn't name names, but the list likely includes major phone makers and fashion brands. The company has a history of powering Android smartwatches and Meta's Quest headsets.

For Qualcomm, this is about survival as much as ambition. The smartphone market is mature. Growth is slowing. Finding the next platform that sells billions of chips is the only way to keep revenue climbing. AI wearables — if they take off — could be that platform.

But there are big hurdles. Battery life is still a problem for glasses that need to run all day. Privacy concerns around always-on cameras will follow. And no one knows if consumers actually want to wear a computer on their face. Qualcomm is betting they will — and it's building the engine to get there.