Cristiano Amon

As Qualcomm CEO since 2021, Cristiano Amon oversaw the chip giant’s 4G and 5G wireless efforts and the development of its massively successful Snapdragon line of processors. He's accelerated the company’s diversification to take it beyond mobile, with somewhat mixed results. The Consumer IoT business (including PCs, wearables like earbuds and smartwatches) is humming, as is the fast-growing auto business which brought in $984 million in revenue this year and has yielded partnerships every major automaker, including Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Volvo, VW, Renault, and more. In June Qualcomm agreed to buy semiconductor firm Alphawave for ~$2.4 billion—its largest deal to date—to strengthen its AI data-center capabilities. The company’s Snapdragon X chips now power many new “AI PCs,” but Qualcomm still faces stiff competition from Apple’s custom silicon and AMD’s AI-accelerated processors in the next-gen computing race.