LIVE FROM MWC25 LAS VEGAS: Qualcomm executive Atilla Tinic (pictured, right) outlined how the role of CIO has been revolutionised by the AI era, including the need to manage agents alongside human employees.

Tinic, Qualcomm’s CIO, stated people in the role are transitioning from technical architects to requiring a deep understanding of business outcomes while managing AI agents.

“You have a new digital worker in the environment in the form of an AI agent,” he said. “The way that worker operates is completely different. It’s going to be able to handle more complex solutions.”

For workflows, he explained AI agents can handle massive amounts of data while performing multiple tasks in parallel.

“I think it’s going to be majorly transformative within the ecosystem itself,” he added.

Tinic stated Qualcomm’s digital transformation set it up nicely for AI agents, but instead of doing application workflow in the cloud it will now run its AI workflow on-site.

“I can’t think of anything that’s more important right now than your data strategy,” he said. “That’s going to power your workflow, but it’s [also] going to power those AI agents in terms of giving them the information they need to do deep reasoning and your integration patterns”.

“The good news is if you made great progress on your digital transformation, you’re probably in good shape. If you didn’t make the progress you wanted to on your digital transformation, then you have homework to do still.”

He advised CIOs to view AI not just as a use case but as a fundamental re-architecture requiring questions about workflows, skills, security and integration to prepare for a new era where AI agents are integral workforce members. 

“Now we’re in a world where we have to think about ourselves as business architects because part of that workforce is being governed by the IT organisation,” he said. “I can’t think of a time where it’s more imperative for CIOs to really understand the business and the business outcomes because you’re going to be at the heart of it.”