Qualcomm Unveils Two AI Platforms Targeting Next-Gen Wearable Devices

Qualcomm is developing more than 40 AI-enabled wearable devices, including jewelry, camera-equipped earbuds, pins, and watches, signaling its commitment to a future computing platform beyond smartphones.

To support this vision, the company introduced two new products: the Snapdragon Reality Elite platform for mixed reality glasses, designed for enhanced on-device AI processing, and the Scalable Turnkey AI-Ready Toolkit (START), which combines hardware modules with a software stack aimed initially at smart glasses.

The Snapdragon Reality Elite platform offers up to 60% improvement in GPU performance, 30% in CPU performance, and 160% in NPU performance compared to Qualcomm’s previous XR platform, according to company data. Qualcomm highlighted that this platform can run a 3-billion-parameter language model at 45 tokens per second, enabling swift AI interactions. It also supports enhanced head and hand tracking and improved see-through capabilities.

This platform delivers 4.4K resolution per eye at 90 frames per second, a slight increase from the prior XR2+ Gen 2’s 4.3K per-eye resolution. Higher resolution and frame rates contribute to a sharper and smoother visual experience, which is important for reducing motion sickness and eye strain during extended headset use.

Qualcomm designed Snapdragon Reality Elite to power two device types: standalone video-see-through (VST) headsets that overlay digital content on a camera feed of the real world, and lightweight, tethered optical-see-through (OST) glasses that integrate digital imagery directly into the user's field of view. Early adopters include XREAL Project Aura, showcased at Google I/O earlier this year, and an upcoming device from Play for Dream.

The START toolkit consists of an augmented reality chip, a software platform, companion applications, and a white-label program intended to help hardware manufacturers accelerate market entry. The white-label program offers three reference designs: an audio and camera configuration similar to Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, a monocular display, and a binocular display.

Eyewear companies Inspecs and O’Neill, owned by TitanFlex, will be among the initial partners in the white-label program. Qualcomm stated that START will eventually extend support beyond smart glasses to other device form factors.

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon explained in an interview with CNBC that as companies increasingly seek real-world data to power AI agents, a surge of startups will create new hardware form factors, which could significantly impact established smartphone manufacturers like Apple and Samsung.

“There’s going to be a lot of experimentation with different form factors,” Amon said. “Right now, we have over 40 designs of those devices, and I’m telling you, the types of form factors are very, very broad.” He added, “The principle is something that you wear, something [that] is with you all the time, something that can see the world around you, so you have context and have the ability for you to access an agent and talk to the agent.”

Qualcomm is positioning itself as the essential silicon provider for the next generation of computing devices beyond smartphones. The START white-label program specifically aims to reduce barriers for new hardware entrants.