Qualcomm and Google deepen partnership for AI in cars

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and Google Cloud today announced a significant expansion of their multi-year collaboration, aiming to bring advanced, “agentic” artificial intelligence experiences to the automotive industry. The partnership, which combines Google’s Automotive AI Agent and Gemini models with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Digital Chassis, is set to redefine in-car experiences, making them more intuitive, personalized, and conversational.

The core of this collaboration is a hybrid edge-to-cloud approach, which allows for powerful AI to operate seamlessly both on the vehicle’s hardware and through cloud connectivity. This means that a driver’s AI assistant can perform essential tasks like media control and navigation instantly on the car’s Snapdragon-powered system, even without a network connection. For more complex queries, such as planning a multi-stop road trip or providing detailed information, the system can leverage the immense power of the Google Cloud, ensuring a complete and robust user experience.

Automakers will benefit from this partnership by gaining a robust toolkit to create and deploy their own branded AI assistants, reducing development time and speeding up deployment cycles. The integration of Google’s Gemini models with the Snapdragon Digital Chassis provides a standardized, secure, and brand-owned platform that can handle multimodal, multi-intent, and multilingual commands. This moves beyond simple voice commands to a truly conversational and proactive assistant that can anticipate a driver’s needs and perform multi-step tasks.

This collaboration builds on a foundation laid in 2016, when the two companies first worked together on an Android-based infotainment system. The current expansion represents a major step forward, aligning with the industry’s shift towards software-defined vehicles (SDVs). As cars become more like computers on wheels, the ability to deliver continuous, over-the-air software updates and new AI-driven features will be a key differentiator for manufacturers. By combining Qualcomm’s hardware leadership with Google’s AI and cloud expertise, the partnership aims to be at the forefront of this automotive transformation, delivering a future where the car is not just a mode of transport but a secure, intelligent, and personalized companion.