Qualcomm unveils 40 AI hardware designs for glasses, earbuds and watches
Qualcomm said it is building more than 40 AI device designs, betting wearables like glasses, pins and camera earbuds could become the next computing platform.
Qualcomm is betting the post-smartphone device race will be won by products that are worn, always on and able to see the world around them. Chief executive Cristiano Amon said the company is working on more than 40 AI hardware designs, ranging from jewelry and camera-equipped earbuds to pins, watches and smart glasses, as he cast AI agents as the “new app.”
The strategy goes beyond a single product category. Qualcomm said it is experimenting with very different shapes because the next major computing platform may not be a phone at all, but a device that stays with the user and can interact contextually with an AI agent. Amon said apps are “not dead,” but he argued they will change as agents take on more tasks, shifting the center of gravity from screen-first computing toward ambient computing.
To support that push, Qualcomm announced Snapdragon Reality Elite and START. Snapdragon Reality Elite is a mixed-reality platform aimed at both standalone video-see-through headsets and lightweight optical-see-through glasses. Qualcomm said the platform delivers up to 60% better GPU performance, up to 30% better CPU performance and up to 160% better NPU performance than its previous XR platform. It can also run a 3-billion-parameter language model at 45 tokens per second and supports 4.4K per-eye resolution at 90 frames per second.
The first devices expected to use Snapdragon Reality Elite include XREAL Project Aura and an upcoming product from Play for Dream. Qualcomm also introduced START, a Scalable Turnkey AI-Ready Toolkit that includes an AR chip, software platform, companion apps and a white-label program. Its reference designs cover audio-plus-camera, monocular display and binocular display devices, with Inspecs and O’Neill, owned by TitanFlex, among the first partners.
The announcement shows how aggressively Qualcomm is moving beyond smartphones as investors and device makers chase AI-enabled wearables. Qualcomm’s June 24, 2026 Investor Day in New York City is set to put that diversification under a brighter spotlight, alongside earlier efforts in XR, robotics, industrial AI and automotive. The company’s bet is clear: if the next dominant consumer device is not a phone, Qualcomm wants to help define what replaces it.
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