Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) advanced its push to bring AI processing directly onto consumer and industrial devices during the first day of its Snapdragon Summit on Wednesday, September 23, 2026.
The San Diego chipmaker, which has a market capitalization of approximately $210 billion and posted $44 billion in trailing-twelve-month revenue, showcased a slate of new silicon, software partnerships and ecosystem milestones aimed at establishing on-device AI as a central pillar of its business.
Liquid AI, a company spun out of MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory three and a half years ago, was highlighted as a key partner. Its Liquid Foundation Models — ranging from 200 million to 24 billion parameters — have accumulated roughly 1.4 million downloads per week on Hugging Face. Ramin Hasani, Liquid AI’s co-founder and CEO, said the models aim to be deployed on 50% of the world’s annually produced devices across wearables, handsets, automotive, PCs, robots and industrial equipment by 2029.
"The next wave is going to be local AI," Hasani said. "Every year we have more than 2 billion processors being built that can host a foundation model around the world."
Qualcomm also detailed progress across its Windows on Snapdragon ecosystem, stating that more than 7,300 applications now run on the platform across over 170 designs from major PC makers, with about 1,800 devices tested for interoperability. Snapdragon-powered PCs are sold in 12,000 stores across 120 countries, with approximately 150,000 sellers trained globally.
New hardware announcements included the Snapdragon X2 Series, with Debian Linux support targeted by the end of 2026 and Ubuntu certification aimed for the first half of next year. The company also confirmed that the HUMAIN Horizon Ultra AI PC would launch in the first half of 2027.
Several partner devices were showcased, including Microsoft Surface laptops and tablets featuring up to 22 hours of battery life and 95% faster local AI inferencing, and a Googlebook powered by a Gemini Intelligence NPU delivering 45 TOPS with up to 19 hours of real-world battery life.
The company introduced Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2, claiming it is 30% smaller, uses 40% less power and delivers twice the compute and AI performance compared with the prior generation. Chris Lattner, Qualcomm’s executive vice president of advanced AI software, emphasized the importance of open development stacks.
"It’s not just about the hardware, it’s about giving developers the freedom to use open stacks and open systems and go to the hardware that makes the most sense for their use cases without jeopardizing the performance they need," Lattner said.
Cameron Slaviero, Qualcomm’s software team lead, addressed privacy concerns surrounding personal AI assistants. "Personal AI is inherently personal," he said. "We recognize the importance of user trust with privacy built into the core experience, including clear visibility into what information is remembered, shared and the privacy choices we make available to users."
Qualcomm also demonstrated its Snapdragon START framework and showcased enterprise safety eyewear from InspEx, which moved from project kickoff to working prototype in four months. Ash Salisbury, CEO of InspEx parent company Aware, said the company had been developing its technology for 40 years before partnering with Qualcomm.
Shares of Qualcomm surged approximately 55% over the past six months to trade near $198 on Wednesday, with a price-to-earnings ratio of 22.95 and a gross profit margin of 54%. The company has raised its dividend for 23 consecutive years.
