Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon revealed that the company has secured a deal with a large hyperscaler for its data center chip offerings. This partnership is expected to be financially material, generating revenue "in the multiple of billion dollars" for Qualcomm by fiscal year 2027. Amon made these comments on "Bloomberg Tech," highlighting the company's strategic push into the lucrative data center market, an area previously dominated by a few key players.
Qualcomm has been actively building its data center capabilities over the past couple of years, acquiring companies like Alpha Wave to bolster its intellectual property and custom chip design teams. The company's data center product strategy includes three main vectors: developing flexible CPUs, an accelerator with an innovative memory architecture that doesn't require HBM for disaggregated inference, and custom chip solutions. Amon emphasized Qualcomm's ability to offer bespoke products, leveraging its supply chain and design expertise to meet customer-specific needs.
This move signifies Qualcomm's ambition to challenge the concentrated data center market, which currently sees about six to eight companies holding most of the market share. The company aims to differentiate itself through flexibility and custom solutions. While Amon did not name the specific hyperscaler, he expressed satisfaction with the engagement and the progress being made, underscoring the long-term potential of this new venture for Qualcomm's broader revenue base.
Separately, Qualcomm has also made other significant moves to bolster its AI strategy, including the acquisition of Modular Inc., an AI software startup, for approximately $3.92 billion. This acquisition aims to strengthen Qualcomm's software foundation for generative and agentic AI across data center and edge environments. Additionally, there are reports of Qualcomm potentially acquiring Tenstorrent, an AI hardware startup, for $8 billion to $10 billion, further demonstrating its commitment to expanding its presence in the AI and data center sectors.
