Robotics did not suddenly arrive at CES 2026, but the tone around it has shifted. What once felt experimental or confined to research labs is now being discussed as a near-term commercial category, and semiconductor companies are positioning themselves accordingly. Qualcomm used its CES appearance to make clear that robotics is no longer a side project. The company announced a broad robotics platform intended to support machines ranging from compact service robots to full-scale humanoids, marking a more deliberate expansion of its AI strategy beyond phones, cars, and PCs.
At the center of this push is Qualcomm’s new Dragonwing IQ10 Series, described as a full-stack robotics architecture that combines silicon, software, and AI tooling. Rather than focusing on a single robot design, the platform is meant to act as a general-purpose foundation that manufacturers can adapt to different form factors and use cases. To illustrate the system’s capabilities, Qualcomm partnered with Vietnamese robotics firm Vinmotion on a humanoid called Motion 2. Demonstration footage shows the robot performing a mix of strength, dexterity, and flexibility tasks, including lifting objects from the floor and bending its torso in ways that highlight its mechanical range of motion.
The Motion 2 itself is not being positioned as a consumer-ready product, but as a proof point for what Qualcomm’s robotics stack can support. More broadly, Qualcomm says it is already working with a range of robotics companies, including Figure and industrial players such as KUKA Robotics. This suggests the company is targeting both enterprise and industrial robotics first, with consumer-facing machines likely to follow later.
The strategic logic is familiar. Qualcomm has spent years developing energy-efficient processors capable of handling AI workloads at the edge, where power consumption, heat, and size constraints matter. Robots share many of the same limitations as cars or mobile devices: they cannot rely on server-class hardware, and every watt consumed affects range, operating time, or safety margins. Advances in vision-language-action models, which allow machines to interpret their surroundings and translate understanding into physical movement, further strengthen the case for dedicated robotics silicon.
Speaking previously about the opportunity, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon described robotics as a natural extension of the company’s existing work, particularly in enterprise environments where automation pressures are already high. That perspective is echoed by executives overseeing the robotics portfolio. Nakul Duggal has emphasized that the safety and perception technologies developed for automotive systems are being carried over into robotics, where machines must operate reliably around people.
The Dragonwing IQ10 is positioned as the “brain” of a robot, handling perception, motion planning, manipulation, and human-robot interaction while remaining power efficient. Whether this translates into widespread deployment will depend on how quickly robotics manufacturers can turn platforms like this into durable, cost-effective machines. What CES 2026 shows, however, is that Qualcomm is no longer watching that process from the sidelines. It is actively trying to shape how the next generation of robots is built and powered.
