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Qualcomm Introduces an End-to-End AI Software Stack
Qualcomm has unveiled a new AI software strategy designed to connect data center computing with AI-powered devices through a unified software stack.
The announcement was made during the keynote speech at Snapdragon Summit 2026, held at the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort in Hawaii on Sept. 23 local time. Chris Lattner, Qualcomm's executive vice president overseeing advanced AI software and platforms, presented the strategy.
Strategy Built Around Modular Acquisition
The plan builds on Qualcomm's acquisition of software developer Modular in July. Lattner, who previously co-founded Modular and served as its CEO, joined Qualcomm following the acquisition.
Qualcomm said it aims to use Modular's roughly four-and-a-half years of work developing an end-to-end AI production stack to create an environment that can manage different types of hardware, including CPUs, GPUs and NPUs, through a single software framework.
Three Components: Mojo, MAX and Modular Cloud
The integrated stack consists of three main components. Mojo is a high-performance programming language designed to combine Python's productivity with the performance of system programming. It is available under the Apache 2.0 open-source license.
MAX is a full-stack model serving framework intended to simplify the development and deployment of AI models across different hardware platforms. Modular Cloud is a cloud software stack designed to reduce the operational complexity of large-scale AI computing environments, which Qualcomm said is already being used in large production environments.
Expanding Hardware Support Beyond GPUs
Qualcomm said it plans to expand support beyond its current GPU-focused approach to cover Snapdragon-based devices, its Dragonwing accelerators for data centers, its broader product portfolio and third-party hardware.
Lattner said AI hardware is expected to become increasingly diverse and that developers need the ability to choose hardware suited to their specific use cases without being locked into a single platform. Qualcomm said its goal is to provide hardware flexibility through an open software stack while maintaining required performance levels.
Collaboration With Microsoft on Windows Support
Qualcomm is also working with Microsoft to provide native Windows support for Mojo. Logan Ayer, Microsoft's corporate vice president for Windows developer platforms, said the companies are working to deliver a high-level Mojo development experience on Windows.
The collaboration is intended to allow developers to use familiar programming methods while achieving system-level performance on Windows and expanding applications from edge devices to cloud environments without being tied to a specific platform or hardware.
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