Amon: AI companies want 100B-parameter models running on phones by 2028

Key points

Key takeaways from a Sources interview with Qualcomm president and CEO Cristiano Amon (October 2026):

100-billion-parameter models on-device by 2028. Amon said some of the AI companies at the forefront have told Qualcomm they need to be able to run at least a 100-billion-parameter model on a phone by 2028, running continuously — and confirmed some AI companies are now starting to build phones, with more coming.

The battle of the agents. He argued the phone is central to agentic AI because a user's personal context — the memory graph, sensor data — only exists on the device, so agents must plan and act locally on that context rather than purely in the cloud.

Cloud and edge is a false dichotomy. Amon rejected the idea that Muse-style cloud virtual machines would win, citing the coexistence of on-prem and cloud: Nvidia recently reported roughly 40% of revenue from AI companies and hyperscalers and 40% from on-prem, neocloud and sovereign AI, a split he expects to persist down to the device.

China and the US are converging on AI differently. In China, adoption of AI into devices and consumers is happening very fast with a strong focus on physical AI at the edge; in the US the frontier-model and enterprise conversation dominates and polling sentiment is “incredibly negative”.

The smartphone market is suppressed, not shrinking. Roughly 1.2 billion phones are sold a year and the premium tier keeps expanding; Amon said memory prices up 5–6x have cut the market by about 20% this year — a supply issue creating pent-up demand — with the AI supercycle and 6G set to revive the conversation.

Guard rails, not the extremes. On AI policy he argued for a middle path: keep investing in the development roadmap while building in guard rails, including hardware-level controls for storage and privacy of a user's personal graph.

Semiconductors as a geopolitical industry. Amon travelled to China with President Trump in May 2026 and believes strong commercial relationships between American and Chinese enterprises will be a point of stability between the two countries.

Read more: Sources — Why AI could make phones interesting again