San Diego — It’s May 7, 2026, just after 9:00 a.m. PDT.
- Qualcomm shares jumped, with investors shrugging off sluggish handset demand and zeroing in on the company’s initial concrete timeline for data-center chip shipments.
- Market chatter lately has pegged Qualcomm as a lower-priced AI semiconductor option compared to Nvidia, Broadcom, and AMD.
- Now the question is if management can actually convert a named shipment window into significant revenue during its June 24 investor day.
Qualcomm shares surged Thursday, with investors pushing the San Diego chipmaker higher on renewed enthusiasm for its emerging data-center AI narrative. The stock last traded at $217.18, a $24.61 gain for the session, after hitting an intraday high of $223.58. That move put Qualcomm’s market cap near $233 billion at its peak during the day.
Qualcomm’s rally is catching attention—it’s not just a handset-cycle story anymore. Investors are starting to price it like a cheap AI infrastructure play. Several analysts this week said the stock still doesn’t capture the company’s foray into custom AI chips, automotive computing, and edge AI, even with the recent surge.
Attention shifted after Qualcomm’s April 29 earnings call, where executives disclosed that a custom silicon deal with a major hyperscaler remains set for its first shipments before year-end. This type of chip, known as an ASIC, is built for a particular client or workload, not for broad, general use.
Chief Executive Cristiano Amon described the buyer as “a large hyperscaler” during the analyst call, adding Qualcomm is eyeing a “multi-generation engagement.” He wouldn’t identify the customer. The company plans to share more on data center and physical AI—AI deployed in machines and devices that engage directly with the real world—at its investor day set for June 24. The Motley Fool
Qualcomm’s second quarter didn’t deliver clear-cut growth. Revenue slid 3% year on year, landing at $10.6 billion. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $2.65, down 7%. Handsets lagged—revenue there dropped 13% to $6.0 billion. Automotive told a different story, up 38% to $1.33 billion. Internet-of-things revenue gained 9%, reaching $1.73 billion.
The bull argument hangs on that split. Investors are betting Qualcomm can lean more on automotive, connected devices, and data-center chips to offset phones—a segment squeezed by pricier memory and softer mid-range Android sales. “We can now call the bottom,” CEO Amon said of the smartphone market after the company’s fiscal third quarter, speaking to Reuters last week. Reuters
Valuation’s carrying the load here. Qualcomm is at roughly 16 times forward earnings, per 24/7 Wall St.—a noticeable discount versus Nvidia, Broadcom, and AMD. The outlet contends that gap might shrink if investors get a firmer sense of Qualcomm’s data-center ambitions at the June investor day.
Simply Wall St. flagged a striking split in Qualcomm valuation on May 6: some bullish investors peg fair value at $300, but its own discounted cash-flow math lands at just $155.23. That $145 gap is the crux—are AI, auto and IoT bets enough to lift the multiple, or do the numbers still say “not so fast” for the stock? Simply Wall St
The field is crowded and cutthroat. Broadcom and Marvell have staked their claim, shipping custom chips to cloud data centers. Nvidia, for its part, still owns the lion’s share of AI accelerators. Qualcomm’s pitch is coming from another angle entirely—leveraging its history in low-power chips, wireless IP, and years of connections in the smartphone world to wedge into this space.
UBS isn’t getting carried away. The firm bumped its Qualcomm price target up to $170 from $150, sticking with a Neutral rating. According to UBS, Apple still poses a $4 billion to $5 billion yearly revenue drag from the 2026 base, and the anticipated data-center push would have to bring in about $10 billion just to meet the optimism reflected in the stock.
Timing’s another wildcard. Qualcomm is projecting revenue for the current quarter between $9.2 billion and $10.0 billion, with non-GAAP EPS in the $2.10 to $2.30 range, pointing to handset customers squeezed by memory issues. If that hyperscaler program doesn’t pick up speed, Apple-linked revenue drops off, and Chinese handset sales stay choppy, the AI rally could flip fast.
Right now, Qualcomm’s getting some leeway from investors on its first foray into AI infrastructure—without the kind of lofty valuations that typically chase AI chip giants. All eyes will turn to June 24: CEO Amon and his team are due to lay out their strategy for “Scaling AI across the connected edge and data center,” as the company puts it. Qualcomm
