The Gladiator Business

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon believes his company is perfectly positioned for the world economy of the future, connecting everything from phones to exercise bikes to cars. And he predicts we’re about to see AI-assisted cars  deployed at a “mass scale.” Fully autonomous vehicles, he concedes, will take longer — perhaps 5 or 10 years — but he says it’s in everyone’s interest to make an intermediate level of assisted driving available in every vehicle on the highway, not just premium cars like Teslas.

In this episode, Cristiano and Joubin discuss Cristiano’s brief diversion away from Qualcomm in venture capital, connecting smart devices, endurance and reinvention, growing up in Brazil, work-life balance, self-driving cars and vintage sports cars, making the “Star Wars hologram” real, digital twins, and introversion vs. extroversion.

In this episode, we cover:

• The semiconductor supply chain, and manufacturing chips in the US & EU (10:00)
• Why Qualcomm is in the “gladiator business” (14:30)
• Making time for your family and your health (18:57)
• Measuring Qualcomm in two-year and ten-year cycles (21:28)
• The incremental steps from today’s assisted driving to fully autonomous cars (24:41)
• Virtual reality, augmented reality, smart glasses, and the metaverse (30:31)
• Cristiano’s time demands and the difference between impatience and being in a hurry (36:41)
• Loving your job and making space for everything else (40:38)

Links:

• Connect with Cristiano
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
• Connect with Joubin
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com 
• Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
• This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm