Cristiano Amon

Cristiano Amon has been a crucial figure at Qualcomm for a long time. He oversaw the chip giant’s 4G and 5G wireless efforts and the development of its massively successful Snapdragon line of mobile processors. But since becoming CEO in 2021, the Brazilian engineer has finally made Qualcomm a credible rival to traditional PC processor companies like Intel and AMD—particularly since the AI craze started. Using the ARM architecture that is ubiquitous in the mobile world, Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X chipsets can be found in many of the “AI PCs” that manufacturers started selling in recent months. And now Qualcomm, with its market cap of $193 billion, is reportedly considering a takeover of flailing Intel.