--- description: Find out why Cristiano Amon made TIME’s list of the most influential people in artificial intelligence. title: TIME100 AI 2025: Cristiano Amon image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2808b855947f169f/6998c95607a30d340877d46f/Christiano-Amon-2.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Aug 27, 2025 # Cristiano Amon President and CEO, Qualcomm by [Amrita Khalid](/author/amrita-khalid/) ## Amrita Khalid Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close  Photo-Illustration by TIME (Courtesy Photo) Qualcomm develops chips for PCs, smart glasses and other devices across the automotive and industrial sectors, while as a heavyweight in mobile, its Snapdragon processor is found in world-leading Android smartphones. Under the leadership of Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm has invested heavily in AI research and development. The 40-year old company may have got its start in wireless technology, but Amon believes AI mobile chips that can be used across a sweep of industries and devices are Qualcomm's "growth engine." Earlier this year, the San Diego-based firm [acquired](https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/01/qualcomm-acquires-generative-ai-division-of-vietnamese-startup-vinai/ "undefined") the generative-AI division of startup VinAI. The end goal for Qualcomm is to develop AI software that can scale across industries—including mobile, PCs, vehicles, and smart glasses. Snapdragon’s neural processing units (NPUs) are already AI-optimized, and Qualcomm has invited developers to create [on-device AI apps](https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2024/05/ai-developer-workflows-simplified-empowering-developers-with-qualcomm-ai-hub "undefined") with an AI hub, released in 2024\. Amon frequently refers to AI as the new user interface. “With AI, a computer can understand human language, can understand what we see, can understand what we hear, and that’s fundamentally changing how we use these devices. It’s changing how these devices are built, the amount of computing that goes into these devices, and how we interact with these applications,” he tells TIME. “And for us, that’s the most exciting development of AI, and that’s what we’re building across phones and PCs and cars to make that reality.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305792/cristiano-amon/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305792/cristiano-amon/"},"headline":"Cristiano Amon","datePublished":"2025-08-27T18:05:23.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T11:54:40.331Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305792/cristiano-amon/","keywords":["Tech","list","franchise","Magazine","Special Project","sponsorshipblock","Accolades","TIME100 AI 2025"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2808b855947f169f/6998c95607a30d340877d46f/Christiano-Amon-2.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Amrita Khalid","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/amrita-khalid/"}],"creator":"Amrita Khalid","articleSection":"Business","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2808b855947f169f/6998c95607a30d340877d46f/Christiano-Amon-2.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/business/","name":"Business"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-tech/","name":"Tech"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305792/cristiano-amon/","name":"Cristiano Amon"}}]}] ```