Qualcomm shares rose to their highest price in 15 months after the company unveiled chips and computers for the lucrative AI data centre market, aiming to challenge Nvidia in the fastest growing part of the industry.
The company’s new AI200 line-up will start shipping next year, Qualcomm said on Monday. The first customer will be Saudi Arabia’s AI start-up Humain, which plans to deploy 200 megawatts’ worth of computing systems based on the chips starting in 2026.
Qualcomm is trying to break into the market for AI accelerators, which are used to create and run artificial intelligence models. It’s an area that has already transformed the semiconductor industry, with hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on data centres to power AI software and services. The torrid growth has turned market leader Nvidia into the world’s most valuable company.
Qualcomm, the largest maker of smartphone processors, looks to gain a foothold in this market with a different approach. It argues that new memory-related capabilities and the power efficiency of Qualcomm’s designs – that owe their roots to mobile device technology – will attract customers, despite its relatively late entry.
The shares climbed 11 per cent to US$187.68, their biggest single-day jump since April and the highest price since July 2024. Arm Holdings, which develops some of the underlying technology used by Qualcomm, gained 4.7 per cent to US$178.62 at the close in New York.
The Humain deal suggests there’s “early traction” for Qualcomm’s new AI accelerators, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Kunjan Sobhani and Oscar Hernandez Tejada said in a note.