Qualcomm announces two Snapdragon chips built for local AI agents

Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 at its annual Snapdragon Summit. The processors put more of the machinery for personal AI assistants inside the phone.

Ivan Mehta reports for TechCrunch that the new sensing hubs can run models with up to 200 million parameters. Qualcomm says these can support a local transcription assistant that distinguishes speakers, alongside memory built from usage to inform suggestions for automating tasks.

The company also says the chips can run a complete agent taking voice input and producing spoken output.

Larger models, and a handset to follow

The Extreme version can run a 30-billion-parameter mixture-of-experts model locally, Qualcomm says. Such a model activates only part of its parameters for a given task, so the headline size does not mean all 30 billion are working on every request.

Both processors support AI-based vocal enhancement and noise reduction. The Extreme also supports 8K video at 60 frames per second and 4K at 240 frames per second, plus the Advanced Professional Video codec.

Motorola announced the Signature 27 smartphone using the Extreme chip, with general availability planned for 2026. That provides a named device for the processor, but the chip's supported capabilities should not be read as a promise that every handset will offer every feature.