Qualcomm Partners with Google and Samsung to Build Smart Glasses

The global tech company Qualcomm is working with Google and Samsung to build new smart glasses. Qualcomm’s CEO, Cristiano Amon, told the news channel CNBC during an interview on Thursday, that they are working on a new device that can connect to the smartphone with a mixed-reality technology.

“It’s going to be a new product, it’s going to be new experiences,” said Amon. “But what I really expect to come out of this partnership, I want everyone that has a phone to go buy companion glasses to go along with it.”

According to the CEO, the experience of wearing the new smart glasses will be very similar to wearing sunglasses or regular eyeglasses, only that it will be listening and “seeing” everything the users see and do. The company is not working on XR headsets for this project as rumored among experts and users in the industry, and as other companies like Apple are doing—with its Apple’s Vision Pro.

“I think we need to get to the point that the glasses are going to be no different than wearing regular glasses or sunglasses. And then with that, we can get scale,” said Amon.

Qualcomm has also been developing chips that can run AI and has been incorporating them into multiple devices, allowing the company to experiment with generative AI, mixed reality technology—virtual and augmented reality— and mixed ways to process information.

“AI is going to run on the device. It’s going to run on the cloud. It’s going to run some in the glass, some in the phone, but at the end of the day, there’s going to be whole new experiences,” explained Amon.

The tech company has also been developing similar products with Meta and Rayban and using AI assistants powered by Meta’s LLM Llama.

According to Reuters, Qualcomm is also interested in buying and using Intel technology—which recently announced a downsizing plan—to develop its AI chips.