Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon revealed the company is working on over 40 AI wearable device designs, signaling a major bet that the next computing platform will replace smartphones. Two new products were announced: Snapdragon Reality Elite, a mixed reality chip platform offering up to 160% NPU performance gains over its predecessor and capable of running a 3B-parameter LLM at 45 tokens/second; and START (Scalable Turnkey AI-Ready Toolkit), a hardware-plus-software bundle with white-label reference designs for smart glasses makers. Early Snapdragon Reality Elite devices include XREAL Project Aura. START's white-label program offers three reference designs — audio+camera, monocular display, and binocular display — with eyewear brands Inspecs and O'Neill among first partners. Qualcomm aims to be the foundational silicon layer for post-smartphone wearable AI hardware.
