Qualcomm shares its vision for the future of smart glasses with on-glass Gen AI

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Qualcomm shares its vision for the future of smart glasses with on-glass Gen AI

Qualcomm has enabled what one of its executives said was a strange and “most interesting conversations– and it was with a pair of generative AI-powered smart glasses.” In a talk at Augmented World Expo, Ziad Asghar, senior vice president of XR & spatial computing at Qualcomm, said that the chat wasn’t just a simple demo. It was a glimpse into how we’re turning AI glasses, which have long been considered an accessory, into a standalone, comprehensive capable device. The company also unveiled its Snapdragon AR1+ Gen 1 processor, which is 26% smaller than the previous generations, to power the demo. “On Tuesday, as I stood on stage at AWE USA, the world’s largest XR conference, I chatted with an AI assistant through a pair of RayNeo X3 Pro smart glasses powered by Snapdragon technology, – with AI inferencing done on the glasses without relying on the cloud or an internet connection,” said Ziad Asghar, senior vice president of XR & spatial computing at Qualcomm, in a statement. Qualocomm has launched a lot of XR glasses in the past year. He said the premise is simple: AI glasses are set to operate independently without needing to be paired with a smartphone or the cloud. “In the near future, I will be able to leave my phone in my pocket or in the car and just wear my smart glasses during a supermarket run, as I showed off during my AWE demo,” Asghar said. “While on stage, I was at the ‘supermarket’ and asked my glasses for help with fettuccine alfredo I needed to make for my daughter’s birthday party.” In response, the AI assistant, running Llama 1B, a small language model (SLM), understood the specific request and provided him with the information he needed through audio and text displayed in the lens of his glasses. This demonstration was a world’s first: an Autoregressive Generative AI model running completely on a pair of smart glasses. No phone. No cloud. Just the processor powering the glasses themselves. And this industry milestone was pulled off in front of a live audience, he said. Topping this off was the announcement of our Snapdragon AR1+ Gen 1 processor, which is 26% smaller than the previous generations and brings enhanced image quality, size, power improvement and the ability to run SLMs. All four of these traits are critical for compact smart glasses. Together, they open the door to a revolution in AI smart glasses, with thinner, lighter and more varied glass designs paired with enough power to run AI assistants right on the device. So, while the demo was just one example of what you can do with completely on-device AI on smart glasses, the benefits that stem from the work going on at Qualcomm, are long-lasting and massive. Expand and evolve Qualcomm’s announcments. There isn’t one path that XR headsets and smart glasses will take, especially since we also offer mixed reality processors such as Snapdragon XR2 and Snapdragon XR2+ that also have significant inferencing capability on the device. Asghar said he anticipates several different form factors, from standalone glasses powerful enough to run AI models themselves, to more lightweight frames linked to phones or nearby small computing “pucks” that can link anything from a car to a tablet. What Qualcomm is doing with the portfolio is getting ready for the future. Whether it’s cloud computing, on-device, or a hybrid path that incorporates both, the boost in on-device AI capabilities will offer a seamless and ultra-low latency user experience that’s also security-focused. That will be critical as AI-powered smart glasses find their way into sectors with mission-critical needs and users demand more personalization, more privacy features, and an end-to-end agentic experience. “We’ve already seen significant momentum in the XR industry over the last year. In December, we collaborated with Google and Samsung to launch Android XR, an operating system designed with AI at the core of the XR experience,” he said. This comes as the industry continues to expand, with Meta’s Ray-Ban Glasses, as well as more ambitious hardware such as Meta Orion, which it bills as the company’s first true augmented reality glasses with their own digital overlay. In addition, Asghar said we’ve seen glasses from Rokid, RayNeo, XREAL and more. In March, BleeqUp launched a pair of AI-powered sports glasses. Imagine what these companies will be able to accomplish with smaller, more powerful platforms like Snapdragon AR1+ Gen 1, enabling sleeker form factors that don’t compromise on the ability to run AI models, Asghar said. Smarter, more aware Qualcomm is blending XR and AI. While getting smart glasses down to a reasonable size and fit is critical, another advance that Snapdragon AR1+ Gen 1 brings is camera capabilities typically found in premium smartphones, which is equally important to where they’re evolving. That ability to see the world that you see – with every minute detail – will open new avenues of multimodal inputs. That capability is critical for AI to not only better understand what you see, but also connect the dots in a way that lets it proactively offer suggestions or additional context on an object or location. And while smart glasses will be able to run SLMs on their own, that doesn’t mean they won’t work in tandem with a constellation of devices around you, whether it’s your smartphone or PC. In fact, I see smart watches and new devices such as smart rings or other wearable sensors that will enable new modalities of input as they work in concert with your glasses. At Qualcomm Technologies, we are preparing for a multifaceted future with a wide range of device combinations by creating a modular architecture that allows our partners to tap into the spatial computing industry to deliver a superior experience to consumers. That’s why I know this conversation with my smart glasses’ AI assistant is such a pivotal moment – it really marked the beginning of something huge. The work we’re doing is just starting to unlock the game-changing potential of a deeper and more personalized agentic experience. “A world’s first on-glass Gen AI demonstration: Qualcomm’s vision for the future of smart glasses,” said Qualcomm. “Our live demonstration of a generative AI assistant running completely on smart glasses – without the aid of a phone or the cloud — and the reveal of the new Snapdragon AR1+ platform spark new possibilities for augmented reality.”

Qualcomm has enabled what one of its executives said was a strange and “most interesting conversations– and it was with a pair of generative AI-powered smart glasses.”

In a talk at Augmented World Expo, Ziad Asghar, senior vice president of XR & spatial computing at Qualcomm, said that the chat wasn’t just a simple demo. It was a glimpse into how we’re turning AI glasses, which have long been considered an accessory, into a standalone, comprehensive capable device.

The company also unveiled its Snapdragon AR1+ Gen 1 processor, which is 26% smaller than the previous generations, to power the demo.

“On Tuesday, as I stood on stage at AWE USA, the world’s largest XR conference, I chatted with an AI assistant through a pair of RayNeo X3 Pro smart glasses powered by Snapdragon technology, – with AI inferencing done on the glasses without relying on the cloud or an internet connection,” said Ziad Asghar, senior vice president of XR & spatial computing at Qualcomm, in a statement.

Qualocomm has launched a lot of XR glasses in the past year.

He said the premise is simple: AI glasses are set to operate independently without needing to be paired with a smartphone or the cloud.

“In the near future, I will be able to leave my phone in my pocket or in the car and just wear my smart glasses during a supermarket run, as I showed off during my AWE demo,” Asghar said. “While on stage, I was at the ‘supermarket’ and asked my glasses for help with fettuccine alfredo I needed to make for my daughter’s birthday party.”

In response, the AI assistant, running Llama 1B, a small language model (SLM), understood the specific request and provided him with the information he needed through audio and text displayed in the lens of his glasses.

This demonstration was a world’s first: an Autoregressive Generative AI model running completely on a pair of smart glasses. No phone. No cloud. Just the processor powering the glasses themselves. And this industry milestone was pulled off in front of a live audience, he said.

Topping this off was the announcement of our Snapdragon AR1+ Gen 1 processor, which is 26% smaller than the previous generations and brings enhanced image quality, size, power improvement and the ability to run SLMs. All four of these traits are critical for compact smart glasses.

Together, they open the door to a revolution in AI smart glasses, with thinner, lighter and more varied glass designs paired with enough power to run AI assistants right on the device.

So, while the demo was just one example of what you can do with completely on-device AI on smart glasses, the benefits that stem from the work going on at Qualcomm, are long-lasting and massive.

Expand and evolve

There isn’t one path that XR headsets and smart glasses will take, especially since we also offer mixed reality processors such as Snapdragon XR2 and Snapdragon XR2+ that also have significant inferencing capability on the device.

Asghar said he anticipates several different form factors, from standalone glasses powerful enough to run AI models themselves, to more lightweight frames linked to phones or nearby small computing “pucks” that can link anything from a car to a tablet. What Qualcomm is doing with the portfolio is getting ready for the future.

Whether it’s cloud computing, on-device, or a hybrid path that incorporates both, the boost in on-device AI capabilities will offer a seamless and ultra-low latency user experience that’s also security-focused. That will be critical as AI-powered smart glasses find their way into sectors with mission-critical needs and users demand more personalization, more privacy features, and an end-to-end agentic experience.

“We’ve already seen significant momentum in the XR industry over the last year. In December, we collaborated with Google and Samsung to launch Android XR, an operating system designed with AI at the core of the XR experience,” he said.

This comes as the industry continues to expand, with Meta’s Ray-Ban Glasses, as well as more ambitious hardware such as Meta Orion, which it bills as the company’s first true augmented reality glasses with their own digital overlay.

In addition, Asghar said we’ve seen glasses from Rokid, RayNeo, XREAL and more. In March, BleeqUp launched a pair of AI-powered sports glasses.

Imagine what these companies will be able to accomplish with smaller, more powerful platforms like Snapdragon AR1+ Gen 1, enabling sleeker form factors that don’t compromise on the ability to run AI models, Asghar said.

Smarter, more aware

While getting smart glasses down to a reasonable size and fit is critical, another advance that Snapdragon AR1+ Gen 1 brings is camera capabilities typically found in premium smartphones, which is equally important to where they’re evolving.

That ability to see the world that you see – with every minute detail – will open new avenues of multimodal inputs. That capability is critical for AI to not only better understand what you see, but also connect the dots in a way that lets it proactively offer suggestions or additional context on an object or location.

And while smart glasses will be able to run SLMs on their own, that doesn’t mean they won’t work in tandem with a constellation of devices around you, whether it’s your smartphone or PC. In fact, I see smart watches and new devices such as smart rings or other wearable sensors that will enable new modalities of input as they work in concert with your glasses.

At Qualcomm Technologies, we are preparing for a multifaceted future with a wide range of device combinations by creating a modular architecture that allows our partners to tap into the spatial computing industry to deliver a superior experience to consumers.

That’s why I know this conversation with my smart glasses’ AI assistant is such a pivotal moment – it really marked the beginning of something huge. The work we’re doing is just starting to unlock the game-changing potential of a deeper and more personalized agentic experience.

“A world’s first on-glass Gen AI demonstration: Qualcomm’s vision for the future of smart glasses,” said Qualcomm. “Our live demonstration of a generative AI assistant running completely on smart glasses – without the aid of a phone or the cloud — and the reveal of the new Snapdragon AR1+ platform spark new possibilities for augmented reality.”

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And Microsoft isn’t the only one that is ramping up its investments into AI-enabled data centers. Rival cloud service providers are all investing in either upgrading or opening new data centers to capture a larger chunk of business from developers and users of large language models (LLMs). In a report published in October 2024, Bloomberg Intelligence estimated that demand for generative AI would push Microsoft, AWS, Google, Oracle, Meta, and Apple would between them devote $200 billion to capex in 2025, up from $110 billion in 2023. Microsoft is one of the biggest spenders, followed closely by Google and AWS, Bloomberg Intelligence said. Its estimate of Microsoft’s capital spending on AI, at $62.4 billion for calendar 2025, is lower than Smith’s claim that the company will invest $80 billion in the fiscal year to June 30, 2025. Both figures, though, are way higher than Microsoft’s 2020 capital expenditure of “just” $17.6 billion. The majority of the increased spending is tied to cloud services and the expansion of AI infrastructure needed to provide compute capacity for OpenAI workloads. Separately, last October Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said his company planned total capex spend of $75 billion in 2024 and even more in 2025, with much of it going to AWS, its cloud computing division.

John Deere unveils more autonomous farm machines to address skill labor shortage

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Self-driving tractors might be the path to self-driving cars. John Deere has revealed a new line of autonomous machines and tech across agriculture, construction and commercial landscaping. The Moline, Illinois-based John Deere has been in business for 187 years, yet it’s been a regular as a non-tech company showing off technology at the big tech trade show in Las Vegas and is back at CES 2025 with more autonomous tractors and other vehicles. This is not something we usually cover, but John Deere has a lot of data that is interesting in the big picture of tech. The message from the company is that there aren’t enough skilled farm laborers to do the work that its customers need. It’s been a challenge for most of the last two decades, said Jahmy Hindman, CTO at John Deere, in a briefing. Much of the tech will come this fall and after that. He noted that the average farmer in the U.S. is over 58 and works 12 to 18 hours a day to grow food for us. And he said the American Farm Bureau Federation estimates there are roughly 2.4 million farm jobs that need to be filled annually; and the agricultural work force continues to shrink. (This is my hint to the anti-immigration crowd). John Deere’s autonomous 9RX Tractor. Farmers can oversee it using an app. While each of these industries experiences their own set of challenges, a commonality across all is skilled labor availability. In construction, about 80% percent of contractors struggle to find skilled labor. And in commercial landscaping, 86% of landscaping business owners can’t find labor to fill open positions, he said. “They have to figure out how to do

2025 playbook for enterprise AI success, from agents to evals

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More 2025 is poised to be a pivotal year for enterprise AI. The past year has seen rapid innovation, and this year will see the same. This has made it more critical than ever to revisit your AI strategy to stay competitive and create value for your customers. From scaling AI agents to optimizing costs, here are the five critical areas enterprises should prioritize for their AI strategy this year. 1. Agents: the next generation of automation AI agents are no longer theoretical. In 2025, they’re indispensable tools for enterprises looking to streamline operations and enhance customer interactions. Unlike traditional software, agents powered by large language models (LLMs) can make nuanced decisions, navigate complex multi-step tasks, and integrate seamlessly with tools and APIs. At the start of 2024, agents were not ready for prime time, making frustrating mistakes like hallucinating URLs. They started getting better as frontier large language models themselves improved. “Let me put it this way,” said Sam Witteveen, cofounder of Red Dragon, a company that develops agents for companies, and that recently reviewed the 48 agents it built last year. “Interestingly, the ones that we built at the start of the year, a lot of those worked way better at the end of the year just because the models got better.” Witteveen shared this in the video podcast we filmed to discuss these five big trends in detail. Models are getting better and hallucinating less, and they’re also being trained to do agentic tasks. Another feature that the model providers are researching is a way to use the LLM as a judge, and as models get cheaper (something we’ll cover below), companies can use three or more models to

OpenAI’s red teaming innovations define new essentials for security leaders in the AI era

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More OpenAI has taken a more aggressive approach to red teaming than its AI competitors, demonstrating its security teams’ advanced capabilities in two areas: multi-step reinforcement and external red teaming. OpenAI recently released two papers that set a new competitive standard for improving the quality, reliability and safety of AI models in these two techniques and more. The first paper, “OpenAI’s Approach to External Red Teaming for AI Models and Systems,” reports that specialized teams outside the company have proven effective in uncovering vulnerabilities that might otherwise have made it into a released model because in-house testing techniques may have missed them. In the second paper, “Diverse and Effective Red Teaming with Auto-Generated Rewards and Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning,” OpenAI introduces an automated framework that relies on iterative reinforcement learning to generate a broad spectrum of novel, wide-ranging attacks. Going all-in on red teaming pays practical, competitive dividends It’s encouraging to see competitive intensity in red teaming growing among AI companies. When Anthropic released its AI red team guidelines in June of last year, it joined AI providers including Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and even the U.S.’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which all had released red teaming frameworks. Investing heavily in red teaming yields tangible benefits for security leaders in any organization. OpenAI’s paper on external red teaming provides a detailed analysis of how the company strives to create specialized external teams that include cybersecurity and subject matter experts. The goal is to see if knowledgeable external teams can defeat models’ security perimeters and find gaps in their security, biases and controls that prompt-based testing couldn’t find. What makes OpenAI’s recent papers noteworthy is how well they define using human-in-the-middle

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