Qualcomm CIO ties internal AI push to broader growth plan

Qualcomm CIO Atilla Tinic is centralizing data and artificial intelligence work and widening access to AI tools as the chipmaker tries to build more business outside smartphones, Fortune reported. The effort comes as Qualcomm pursues growth in data centers, cars, internet-connected devices and other markets while handset demand remains uneven.

Tinic joined Qualcomm in February 2025 after three decades in telecommunications and a CIO role at EchoStar, according to Fortune. He told Fortune he was attracted by Qualcomm’s plan to expand beyond its traditional handset-heavy business.

At EchoStar, Fortune reported, the Dish business had sought to become the fourth major wireless carrier in the U.S. The Verge reported that Dish dropped that plan last year, and that the subsidiary filed for bankruptcy in June 2026 after planned spectrum-license sales to AT&T and SpaceX did not close in time.

Qualcomm has been making a broader push into AI and other chip markets. CNBC reported that the company unveiled AI accelerator chips last year to compete with Nvidia and AMD, and later reported that Qualcomm was working with OpenAI on a smartphone AI chip.

CNBC also reported that Qualcomm shares rose last month after the company laid out fiscal 2029 targets at an investor day, including $40 billion in non-handset revenue and $15 billion in data center sales. Fortune reported that Qualcomm beat Wall Street expectations on revenue and earnings in the first two quarters of 2026, even as Yahoo Finance reported that the global smartphone market was expected to contract at a record pace.

Central teams and wider AI access

One of Tinic’s early changes was to create centralized data and AI groups instead of placing those employees inside separate infrastructure and application teams, Fortune reported. The company has also rolled out AI coding assistants, Microsoft Copilot and generative AI features from ServiceNow, Salesforce’s Slack and Atlassian’s Jira, according to Fortune.

Tinic told Fortune that companies trying to build AI capabilities entirely on their own risk falling behind because the technology is changing quickly. Inside Qualcomm, Fortune reported, AI agents are being used to check purchase orders and assign accuracy scores so customer service workers can focus on missing or incorrect information.

Fortune also reported that Tinic’s IT team built an AI agent that handles most of the process for refreshing an employee laptop. Tinic said Qualcomm employees also use AI across software testing, research and personal productivity.

The harder work, Tinic told Fortune, is redesigning full workflows rather than adding automation around the edges. He said autonomous AI agents can reason and operate differently from earlier automation tools, which means the workflow itself has to change.

Measuring output and controlling costs

Tinic evaluates AI work through three measures: volume, speed and quality, Fortune reported. For software developers, Qualcomm looks at how much work gets delivered, whether products reach market faster and whether defects decline; for help desk work, it tracks AI-resolved tickets as well as reopened tickets.

Tinic told Fortune he wants employees shifted toward higher-value work that helps Qualcomm grow and away from administrative tasks. Fortune reported that an AI council involving legal, security and IT experts, created before Tinic arrived, reviews new large language models, AI tools and data sets for security.

Qualcomm is also watching AI token costs as internal use rises, according to Fortune. Tinic has set what he described as generous token limits, but employees who exceed them may be asked to consider cheaper models for lower-risk work, such as using Anthropic’s Claude Haiku for documentation instead of Claude Opus.

This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.