Qualcomm launches two new phone chips focused on on-device AI agents and local models

Qualcomm launches two new smartphone chips with emphasis on AI

At its Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and the higher-end Extreme variant. Both chips push on-device AI: a new sensing hub runs small models up to 200M parameters locally for transcription, speaker diarization, and memory-based task automation. The Extreme version can run a 30B MoE model on-device, which Qualcomm says enables a full voice-in/voice-out agent. The post doesn't disclose power consumption, pricing, or which phones will ship first.