Qualcomm CEO sees robotics as a ‘larger opportunity’ within 2 years
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon delivers a keynote speech at Computex on May 19, 2025 in Taipei, Taiwan.
Anne Wang | Reuters
BARCELONA, Spain — Robotics will become a ‘bigger opportunity’ for the world Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon told CNBC that over the next two years, the chip giant will continue to push into areas beyond the smartphone.
In January, Qualcomm launched a robotics processor under the Dragonwing brand as it plans to create a chipset that can run on multiple robotics platforms. It’s a similar approach to smartphones, where the company’s Snapdragon processors have become a key chip used by electronics companies.
“I think robotics will start to scale in the next two years,” Amon told CNBC on Monday in response to a question about when robotics will become a major business for Qualcomm.
“I think this will become a bigger opportunity in two years,” he added during an interview at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
There are many different types of robots, from those focused on industrial applications, such as robotic arms, to the Tesla-type and humanoid robots that many Chinese companies are developing.
There are various estimates regarding the size of the robotics market. McKinsey projects The general-purpose robot market could reach $370 billion by 2040, while analysts at RBC Capital Markets predict that the global total addressable market for humanoid robots will reach $9 trillion by 2050.
Moving robots requires processors and a lot of difficult engineering. But growing optimism about robotics has also been driven by advances in artificial intelligence models. These models are designed to power the robot so it can understand the world around it and act accordingly. Robots are often talked about in a category called physical artificial intelligence.
“People say robotics alone could be a trillion-dollar opportunity in terms of market size… the reality is that robots have become much more useful thanks to physical AI,” Amon said.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said last year that robotics was one of the company’s most important sources of potential growth.
Robotics is the main theme at Mobile World Congress where different robots are showcased. On Sunday, Chinese smartphone player Honor teased its first humanoid robot.
