Dell Launches $999 XPS Googlebook With Gemini AI

Qualcomm has unveiled two new smartphone chips built around agentic AI, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6. The chips will be built into smartphones from premium Android makers, with Qualcomm's big push centered on on-device AI capabilities. Qualcomm is making this push alongside Intel, AMD and Nvidia, while Apple has been pushing on-device AI in its new laptops, and HP and Dell are also talking up the approach. The pitch is that running AI models directly on a device keeps user information private and avoids the need to sign up for a cloud provider. Qualcomm has been in this space for a while, having previously debuted PC chips for Windows laptops, and the company is now emphasizing GPU, CPU and neural processing unit cores because running AI agents on a device requires a strong CPU to avoid processing delays.

Qualcomm unveiled two 2-nanometer Snapdragon platforms aimed at putting more AI work directly on smartphones, sending its shares down about 1.0% to $196.265 Wednesday morning. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 sits at the top of the lineup, while the 8 Elite Gen 6 brings many of the same AI, camera and connectivity features to a broader range of premium phones. Qualcomm named nine participating brands, including Motorola, OnePlus, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi, and Motorola has announced a phone using the Extreme chip, giving the launch its first concrete device example. The investor question is whether two flagship chips can turn more premium phone launches into more sales for Qualcomm, with device volumes and the appeal of on-device AI mattering next. At $196.265, the shares sit 11.87% above the displayed GF Value of $175.44.

Apple is pitching its new Macs as a way for businesses to run AI models without paying for every cloud request, and the hardware is now on sale. Apple says its Mac Studio can hold up to 512GB of unified memory, giving large models room to run on the device, and at a launch demonstration four linked Mac Studios ran a trillion-parameter model from one wall outlet, according to Reuters. Shares were down about 0.7% at $337.22, compared with the previous close of $339.75, and at that price Apple trades 17.6% above the displayed GF Value of $286.75. Local AI could give Macs a fresh selling point, but the economics depend on how heavily customers use the machines, since a large upfront purchase saves money only if the cloud bills it replaces are large enough to cover the hardware and the work of managing it.