Qualcomm’s CEO on the coming AI phone supercycle

So Cristiano, you run Qualcomm, and your technology powers many Android phones, Meta smart glasses, a bunch of coming wearables, and a growing number of cars, and I wanna get into all of that. But I wanna start with something else, which is you also have a very interesting view of the US and China. Qualcomm has a very strong Snapdragon brand in China. That's something I've actually learned a lot being here at the summit that you guys are having, um, is just the rabid fan base for Snapdragon in China, and I think that gives you a unique window into the, into the two markets. Um, a- and I wanna start with how people in China are feeling about AI relative to the United States. The sentiment, when you look at the sentiment and how it polls on AI around the world, it's very different based on, uh, geographies. And maybe could you contrast the two a little bit?

If I do a compare and contrast, the broad adoption of AI into the devices and in consumers, I see, I see that happening in China very, very fast. In the United States, I see the development of frontier models in enterprise adoption AI. Those are kind of dominates the conversation. That's the difference in conversation between both.

And when you talk to people in China about AI, does it feel like they're imagining maybe a different future than people in America? The, the sentiment in America when you, when you look at the polling, it's incredibly negative.

Look, every new technology has-- It will bring uncertainty, right? So, you know, it's interesting, uh, you know, you, uh, if you go back in time and you see different technology transitions, some of the concerns. O- obviously what happened in the United States, I give you my perspective, is AI has been an important, uh, productivity tools for a number of sectors. For example, a company like Qualcomm, I was even asked today in, in a different conversation, said, "Well, you guys are doing a lot. You're transforming the company. You're doing a lot of things in parallel. How can you allocate capital to do all of those things in parallel?" And if you actually look, we have been relatively expanding the company with kind of a f- flat s- uh, scale of operating expenses. A great part of this is productivity gains using AI through the development process. So, so you have clearly those aspects of AI for productivity gains, and there are obviously concerns about is that gonna impact jobs. There are, are companies, uh, you know, b- gonna leverage on AI, and they're not gonna need as much manpower. So, and that conversation is probably universal. I don't think that's unique, uh, to the United States. You do have this conversation about data center. Data centers is, is massive. You look at those massive deployment. You need more and more compute. It's a wall, I think, of the demand for compute. Um, and you obviously have concerns about is this gonna increase my electricity bill? So those conversations I think are natural. The latter, I don't see it in China. I see more of, uh, it's, it's an-- It's like a feature. It's an evolution. The two countries are looking this a little bit different. I think, for example, uh, China has been really focused on physical