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Cristiano Amon, President and CEO of Qualcomm, spoke to India Today at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, expressing strong optimism about India's role in the AI revolution.
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00:04Hello everyone. The world, it seems, has converged in New Delhi for the India AI Impact Summit.
00:13The brightest, the greatest of our times are all here. And someone who's extremely bullish
00:20on the India AI story is the Qualcomm President and CEO, Cristiano Amon. He's right here with us.
00:27Cristiano, how has your India visit been so far?
00:32It's been great. First of all, thank you for having me here. I'm happy to talk to you.
00:36It's been great. I'm encouraged. I'm energized. I feel that it's an incredible opportunity.
00:42We always believe that AI will be democratized. AI will be everywhere in every device.
00:48And I think the opportunity in India is tremendous, especially given the scale and some of the things
00:53we have seen in the past, how India has developed the mobile ecosystem. Why would that be different
01:00on AI? So that's why I'm very enthusiastic about it.
01:03As you said, to quote you, AI is going to be everywhere. In the next five years, will AI
01:10be something that we use unconsciously? Something that will be there quietly living in our devices,
01:17cities, and daily decisions. And if that shift happens, where do you see India?
01:23Yes. So it's really important, I think, to understand what's happening with AI to answer this question.
01:32I think we're turning the page on the next chapter of AI. There's an enormous amount of investment now
01:38building a very large data center. And that will continue. And a lot of those data centers,
01:43it's creating AI with their factory of AIs, the training, you get all this data. Once AI is created,
01:52those models are going to run everywhere. And it's going to be how we're going to be thinking
01:57about computers in the future. It's going to be what our computers are going to run. And the computers
02:05that we have today, like your smartphone, your PC, the computer that is now your car, and the new type
02:11of computers, which are new kind of devices that will connect us to agents. And as AI now, it's a
02:19software that understands what we say, what we hear, what we write, what we see. We're going to be
02:27interacting with those agents in a very natural way. And I think exactly as you pointed out, it's going
02:33to be everywhere. It's going to be all around us. It's going to be part of our daily lives.
02:36And whatever we experience with our smartphones, which are our most inseparable device,
02:41this is going to be much bigger with AI.
02:44Okay. So does that finally lead to democratization of AI?
02:49Democratization of AI and also AI as a tool will democratize knowledge, will democratize access
02:58to information, will democratize training. It's going to be ongoing education for all of us
03:05and much more.
03:06So if we are looking at any breakthrough or defining AI device, what will you be predicting?
03:13And will that be coming from New Delhi, some part of India, back of beyond of India, or from Silicon
03:20Valley?
03:21Yes. Look, this is a great topic of conversation. So I'm going to answer the first part of your question.
03:30I have been very bullish that while our phones are not going to go anywhere and our phones are
03:36going to get upgraded to AI phones and we're going to see agents and many of the apps are going
03:41to get
03:41replaced with agents. There will be new devices. And the one that I'm being very bullish on is smart
03:48glasses. Because the smart glass is very close to our senses, to our eyes, to our mouth, to our ears.
03:54So
03:54it can, with microphones, can capture what we say, what we hear, what we see. And we're very exciting.
04:00Right now we have a number of projects here in India with companies building smart glasses enabled
04:06by AI, including multiple agents, including the India software agent. And the second part of your
04:14question is where is this going to come from? It's going to come from Silicon Valley. It's going to come
04:17from India.
04:19See, what is unique about agents is they have to be very contextual aware and personalized. Maybe an agent that
04:28I'm
04:28going to use is going to be different to the agent you use. Over time, it's going to be relevant
04:32to me. It's going to get
04:35fine-tuned and trained on the things that I do. So I think the regional play that exists for AI
04:43across many companies,
04:44the regional play that exists for culture is very relevant. So I expect the answer will be those devices are
04:51going to come
04:51from everywhere and in India will have a very important role to play.
04:55So those devices will be perhaps regional specific? Or region specific?
05:00Well, I think you should be thinking about the device in itself, what are the companies, then the device
05:06manufacturer, and then the models, and then the applications. And it's going to be a mix. I think, like for
05:12example, in your phone today,
05:13you have global apps and you have India apps and content, and I think it's going to be like that.
05:20But I do believe that the combination of the AI direction plus the electronics manufacturing ecosystem that is now
05:31getting a scale in India, you're going to see not only from a model, from a services, but also from
05:37an actual
05:38hardware itself. I think you're going to see that happening in India.
05:41Your predictions are absolutely fascinating, Cristiano. In an edge AI world, who controls intelligence?
05:51So when you think about the edge, and the reason we're very interested about that, because we make the chips
05:59where the people are,
06:00where the things are, where the machines are, where the car are. And even though we're going to the data
06:04center,
06:04but we make chips for all those different things. And, you know, there's all of this conversation about control,
06:12but really what is happening is you're going to create models. Those models are going to be working with the
06:19data that is going to happen on those devices.
06:21There's going to be some that are going to be language. Some is going to be physical AI, like you
06:27train machine on sensor data,
06:29like a robot, which is trained on our physical world. And it's actually going to be, you know, controlled by
06:39the applications that you're going to use those models for.
06:42I look at this as going to be, I think, no different than what we have seen with the capability
06:48of smartphones with PCs.
06:51You're going to have a very, very powerful software. You're going to have data, and you're going to apply this
06:55to many different applications.
06:57One that I'm very bullish about is industrial. We often talk about consumers. We talk about language models.
07:03You know, when we go in, we ask a question and get a response. But the industrial application, manufacturing, the
07:11warehousing, the energy sector,
07:15all of those you can have now AI operating with the industrial data, and the industrial enterprise is going to
07:22make decisions again on how to, you know, apply those systems.
07:25You know, since in India, Qualcomm is pushing into AI inference for data centers from 2027, what's driving this shift?
07:37Look, it's very interesting for you to look at the evolution of AI. Right now you see significant amounts of
07:46energy,
07:47energy, and I mean energy literally, not only power energy, energy of companies to try to...
07:53I can see this right here. In front of me. To try to create, I think, some of the world's
07:59most capable AI.
08:01But once that is created, that's going to go into production. And production means inference.
08:09You've created AI, you're going to put it to work. And that's going to happen everywhere.
08:14And this is where AI, inference is where AI actually gets scale. You're designing AI for inference. That's really the
08:23outcome.
08:24And once that happens, another thing will come into the picture. Companies will have to compete.
08:32You know, you're starting to see, you know, already the beginning of competition in AI.
08:37Like, you start to see the competition between companies. And when you start to compete, then it's going to be,
08:45how efficient can you generate tokens? Like, what is the total cost of ownership of your, you know, system that
08:53you're building?
08:54What is the data center or the edge? Because you're going to sell that AI, and somebody's going to pay
08:59for it,
08:59and you're going to have competitors. That's where Qualcomm come into play.
09:02Our DNA comes from the phone market. We have designed chips for a battery-powered device.
09:09We never had the luxury to assume that our chips were plugged to the wall.
09:13We have to be very, very smart about power consumption because the battery that we had has to last all
09:20day,
09:20and you don't have to do all the computing. That DNA creates very power-efficient systems for inference,
09:27especially for the next cycle of the data center and AI, and I'm very encouraged about that.
09:34We'll get to green AI in just a bit since you've talked about energy.
09:39You know, you have compared compute to perhaps what is being seen as a foundational resource for AI.
09:48Is compute then becoming the new oil?
09:54I always believe when you think about AI systems, data is very important.
10:02And I think, yes, compute is important. Energy is important. You're always going to need more compute.
10:08By the way, in the history of our company doing semi-conductors, I never heard anybody said,
10:14I got enough compute. I don't need any more. I think compute is always going to continue to increase.
10:18But data is very important, and I want to highlight data probably a little bit different than some of the
10:24conversations that you see today.
10:26Today, a lot of the data that have been training models, the data that's publicly available on the Internet.
10:30I think the data of everything that's going to have been created, you know, by humans today about writing things.
10:37Now, let's just go back to that example I gave it to you.
10:40Let's say that in the very near future, you're wearing a smart glass.
10:45And as you go do your life, you have this smart glass that is seeing what you see.
10:52It's listening to your conversations and assuming, you know, that data can stay with you or you're going to authorize
11:01what you want to authorize.
11:03But when you have all that data, that data is massive, is an order from everyone, is an order of
11:09magnitude more important, I think, and bigger than the data that is available today.
11:16So I believe access to that data is very important, how you think about the evolution and the capability of
11:23those AI models.
11:24And I think that probably the most important thing is still data.
11:29In a country as vast as ours, we have often seen AI as opportunity.
11:36You know, Prime Minister Modi famously said that you should not fear AI.
11:40And as a nation, we are seeing that as our future.
11:44Let's address the elephant in the room, and this is about jobs.
11:47Will AI create jobs, and will those jobs be at places where disruptions would happen?
11:56Every time you have a big technology shift, you have changes.
12:00Right.
12:00And, you know, I like to do parallels with the mobile revolution and the smartphone revolution because that's very near
12:09and dear to Qualcomm.
12:11So, if I look what happened is you clearly saw, when you have access to internet, how it changed society
12:19and how it was very empowering technology.
12:22So I believe what AI is going to do is going to democratize knowledge.
12:27You'll be able to, I don't know how to do this, and how do I do this?
12:30And you're going to get information, you're going to get information in a much more easier, in a much more
12:35relevant way.
12:35We're all going to get empowered, we're going to have, you know, ongoing training.
12:41But the question is still relevant.
12:43How would that eliminate all the jobs?
12:46And, look, while every time technology shifts happen, you create new jobs, some other jobs change, it's really hard to
12:55predict.
12:56But I'm going to give you my own personal experience.
12:58I don't know if that's relevant, but that's how I think about it.
13:02This may show my age, but when I just got out of engineering school, and I'm in the school, like
13:07I was using computers,
13:09was at the time the internet was just starting, was starting to use email.
13:13And I look at some of the corporations when I went to do internship, and they still have, they show
13:18up in the morning to the fax machine,
13:20they get all the stuff from the fax, and they're writing intercompany memo and using the typewriter.
13:25Then all of a sudden the computer arrived, the internet arrived, the email, everything changed.
13:30Did it change many of the jobs? Yes.
13:32But actually it was very empowering.
13:35I think, that's how I think about AI.
13:37It's going to be that type of change.
13:39I think we have done okay with that type of change in the past, and I think we're going to
13:44do okay with this change in the future.
13:45How do you define this moment in history?
13:49Look, I believe that, you know, it's going to be very, very disruptive, but it's going to be a whole
14:01new era, I think, for technology.
14:03And it's not just unique, you know, to some of the things you see today, it's going to be some
14:08of the things you're going to see tomorrow.
14:10As an example, we're working on the next generation of wireless communications, 6G.
14:18And one of the most exciting things about 6G, it will basically change the telecom sector because of AI in
14:26something new.
14:27If I go back, and I think you'll remember, the telecom sector is about giving you a line with a
14:33dial tone, and you make a phone call.
14:35Today, it's about massive amount of broadband.
14:38Voice is just one application between many.
14:41The 6G network with AI is going to be beyond connectivity.
14:44It's going to be a sensing network.
14:46It's going to sense everything around us.
14:50It's going to use RF like radar.
14:51You're going to know the location of every car, the location of every person.
14:55You're going to detect drones.
14:56You're going to manage traffic control.
14:58You're going to manage traffic.
14:59The telecom sector is going to be a whole different sector.
15:01This is how defining this AI moment is.
15:05It's going to fundamentally change, you know, many industries.
15:09It's going to be the new industrial revolution.
15:11It's going to change productivity.
15:13It's going to change telecom.
15:15It's going to change many other industries.
15:16But that's very exciting.
15:18Since you spoke about 6G, how do you see that moving us from connected devices to truly intelligent environments?
15:28Yes.
15:28Particularly in India's smart cities.
15:31Yes.
15:33So, there will be a lot of activity now as 6G development is getting momentum.
15:38But I will give you a consumer example, a smart city example, I think, to your question.
15:45We just talked about agents.
15:47We're just talking about new devices like glasses.
15:50One of the capabilities of 6G networks, the agentic modems, is the ability to have connectivity not only for your
15:57phone, but those new classes of devices.
15:59And use the context of the sensing network to provide information for agents, for them to be actually more relevant,
16:08you know, and more accurate to what you need them to do.
16:12At the same time, at the scale of a city, with the sensing, you'll be able to have now a
16:19tool that you can actually manage traffic.
16:23You can manage aerial traffic, like, for example, for drones, and it becomes a very, very important asset for you
16:32to actually start creating smart infrastructure.
16:35And that's like the new role that we think about 6G networks.
16:40What must India necessarily do, Mr. Cristiano Amon, in the next five years to perhaps genuinely stay in the global
16:50AI and chip supply chain?
16:53Yes. If I have to give one advice, I think the strategy is very clear, the vision is very clear.
17:00One advice is those things, they are not short-term projects. They're long-term projects.
17:06So the execution, you need to be prepared to be on a multi-year journey.
17:12Sometimes it's like decades long. But I like what I see. I think I'm very energized.
17:17I think the ecosystem of electronics manufacturing is forming here.
17:22We're the beginning of also supply chain for semiconductors.
17:27As one of the largest, fabulous companies, we want a very, you know, healthy and diversified semiconductor supply chain.
17:35And you see, I think, now the development of many initiatives to drive those new devices AI.
17:42I think the importance is you have to stay with it.
17:45Those are decade-long projects.
17:48But, you know, at the end of the day is an opportunity, I think, for India to be a global
17:52player.
17:53Not only local, but a global player in the technology landscape.
17:56You know, because you have repeatedly called India a critical technology market.
18:01So, in terms of Qualcomm's greater plans, do you see India as a center of future innovation?
18:11Or is it about a semiconductor hub?
18:15Look, I don't know if we're the right question for you to ask this.
18:21Because our history with India is probably as long as the Qualcomm history, you know, themselves.
18:27So, actually, I am incredibly, incredibly grateful for our employees in Hyderabad, in Bangalore, in Chennai, in Noida.
18:35We have, India has been our second largest R&D hub in the company.
18:40And I think we saw, you know, the talent capability and the opportunity for innovation in India before it was
18:47popular.
18:48And it has, we have been on this journey.
18:51For example, some of our global chips have a lot of contribution from our India teams.
18:56We just announced with the IT minister the two nanometer chip, you know, that's been designed by Qualcomm in India.
19:04So, I think, besides being a great market, it is a hub of innovation.
19:09I think our fund on AI startups is actually believing that there's going to be, you know, a lot of
19:15innovation coming out of this market.
19:16And if you continue down this path of building the infrastructure, the scale of electronics, it's going to have a
19:24significant place, I think, in the global technology landscape.
19:28And that brings me to my last question.
19:30When you look back towards this decade, what is one thing that you will say that you got right?
19:40So, it's interesting.
19:43I will say that for a company like Qualcomm, even though we're now diversified working across many industries,
19:51we have been into every single generation of wireless from 2G to 3G to 4G and 5G.
19:57And one thing that even before we started, I think we knew we were right.
20:02Every new transition creates massive change.
20:05The players change.
20:07The role of the continents change.
20:11And I think this time is not going to be any different.
20:14Christian Amon, pleasure speaking to you.
20:16Likewise.
20:16And hope to see you more in India.
20:18Thank you for your time.
20:19Thank you so much.
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