Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon delivers a keynote speech at Computex in Taipei, Taiwan, on May 19, 2025.
Ana Wang | Reuters
BARCELONA, Spain — Robotics will become a “greater opportunity” for Qualcomm within the next two years, CEO Cristiano Amon told CNBC, as the chip giant continues its foray into areas beyond smartphones.
In January, Qualcomm launched a robotic processor under the Dragonwing brand, aiming to create a chipset that can run on multiple robotic platforms. It’s a similar approach the company has taken with smartphones, where its Snapdragon processors have become a key chip used by electronics companies.
“I think robotics will start to gain scale in the next two years,” Amon told CNBC on Monday, in response to a question about when robotics will become a material business for Qualcomm.
“I think within two years it will become a bigger opportunity,” he added during the interview at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
There are many different types of robots, from those focused on industrial applications such as robotic arms, to humanoid robots, of the type that Tesla and countless Chinese companies are developing.
There are several forecasts for the size of the robotics market. McKinsey projects that the general-purpose robot market could reach $370 billion by 2040, while analysts at RBC Capital Markets have forecast a total global addressable market for humanoids of $9 trillion by 2050.
Robots need processors and a lot of difficult engineering to move. But the greater optimism around robotics is also due to advances in artificial intelligence models. These models are designed to drive the robot so that it can understand the world around it and act accordingly. Robots are often talked about in a category called physical AI.
“People have said that robotics alone could be a trillion-dollar opportunity in terms of market size… the reality is, as we see now, because of physical AI, robots have become much more useful,” Amon said.
Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, said last year that robotics is one of the company’s main potential sources of growth.
Robotics is a key theme at Mobile World Congress, with different robots on display. On Sunday, Chinese smartphone maker Honor showed off its first humanoid robot.
