The next big name in smartphones might not be a phone maker at all. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon told journalist Alex Heath in an interview recorded around the Snapdragon Summit that some of the biggest names in artificial intelligence are asking Qualcomm for chips that can run a 100-billion-parameter AI model on a phone, nearly all the time, by 2028. Then he said the line that set social media off: “AI companies are starting to do phones.”
What Amon Actually Said
Amon was careful not to name anyone. According to the transcript circulating widely this weekend, he said some companies “at the forefront of AI” have told Qualcomm that by 2028 they need the ability to run at least a 100-billion-parameter model in a phone, “running kind of all the time.” When Heath pressed on whether AI companies are really making hardware, Amon confirmed it plainly.
Qualcomm has not announced any chip built to meet that request. As one analysis put it, the comments are best read as a signal of where the industry wants to go, not a product promise.
Why 100 Billion Parameters Is a Big Jump
Here is the gap. Reports suggest Qualcomm’s most advanced mobile silicon today can run mixture-of-experts models of around 30 billion parameters locally. That is the same class of chip we covered in our look at Qualcomm’s Hexagon NPU built for agentic AI. A 100-billion-parameter target is more than three times larger.
Memory is the hard part. As a rough guide, a 100-billion-parameter model needs about 50GB of memory at 4-bit precision, or around 25GB at 2-bit. Most phones today carry a fraction of that, which is why commenters online are already joking about 64GB RAM phones.
Which AI Companies Might Be Building Phones?
Amon would not say. Some outlets point to OpenAI as a likely candidate, citing earlier reports that the ChatGPT maker is working with industry partners on an AI smartphone that could use a customized version of MediaTek’s Dimensity 9600 chip. That is reporting, not confirmation, and OpenAI has not announced a phone.
If it is true, the competitive picture changes. Samsung has built its flagship strategy around Galaxy AI since 2024, and Apple just launched a Gemini-powered Siri on the iPhone 18 lineup. A new kind of rival, one that starts with the AI model and builds hardware around it, would be a different threat from another handset brand.
The “Battle of the Agents”
Amon also predicted what he calls a “battle of the agents,” where AI assistants act on your behalf across apps and services instead of living inside one chatbot window. Phones are the natural home for that, because they already hold your personal context, app data, and sensor information. He also said smart glasses are likely to become the dominant AI wearable, a trend already visible in our coverage of China’s smart glasses sales doubling in 2026.
The Bottom Line
Nothing here is a launch. There is no named company, no chip, and no date beyond 2028. But when the CEO of the company supplying chips to most of the Android world says AI labs are walking into the phone business, it is worth paying attention. The race to put frontier-grade AI on a device you carry every day is no longer just about software.
You can follow Qualcomm’s latest announcements on Qualcomm’s official site.
