Various aspects of the present disclosure generally relate to wireless communication. Some aspects more specifically relate to discrete Fourier transform spread orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (DFT-S-OFDM) waveform pre-equalization for MIMO communications. A receiver device, such as an extended reality (XR) device, may be configured to offload a portion of data processing to a companion device, such as a user equipment (UE). In some aspects, the UE may generate a DFT-S-OFDM waveform and may apply a pre-equalization to the DFT-S-OFDM waveform. Applying the pre-equalization to the DFT-S-OFDM waveform may include applying a minimum mean square error (MMSE) pre-equalization to the DFT-S-OFDM waveform. The receiver device may receive the pre-equalized DFT-S-OFDM waveform from the UE and may process the pre-equalized DFT-S-OFDM waveform. For example, the receiver device may decode the pre-equalized DFT-S-OFDM waveform without performing fast Fourier transform (FFT) or inverse discrete Fourier transform (IDFT) operations.