Chief Executive Cristiano Amon sees a world where smartphone apps give way to intelligent agents. “AI agents will be the new apps,” he said recently, sketching a future in which users interact with conversational interfaces instead of navigating menus. To get there, Qualcomm is working on more than 40 new AI device categories — from smart glasses that could ship in the hundreds of millions of units, to AI-infused jewellery and watches, to earbuds with built-in cameras. The bet is on edge AI: processing done directly on the device rather than in the cloud. “Whoever is closest to the user wins the race,” Amon argues.
That vision is just one piece of a far broader transformation. The chipmaker is racing to cut its dependence on the handset market, which shrank 13% in the latest quarter. Non-smartphone segments are expected to account for roughly 70% of revenue by the early 2030s, analysts predict. Automotive surged 38% in the quarter, while the IoT division climbed 9%. Qualcomm’s overall quarterly revenue stood at $10.6 billion, with the newer businesses contributing a growing share.
Central to the hardware pivot is a bet on the open-source RISC-V architecture — a move management internally calls a “generational bet”. Qualcomm has already snapped up Ventana Micro Systems, a specialist in high-performance CPU cores, in a deal that closed late last year. Now it is in talks to acquire Tenstorrent, a startup founded in 2016 and led by chip veteran Jim Keller, whose résumé includes stints at Apple, Tesla and AMD. Tenstorrent develops AI accelerators built on RISC-V; its flagship “Galaxy Blackhole” platform packs 768 RISC-V cores. The price tag is said to be between $8 billion and $10 billion.
For a company that has long relied on ARM licensing, adding Tenstorrent would mark a strategic about-face. It would also give Qualcomm a direct entry into the AI data-centre market. The firm has set an ambitious goal: generate more than $35 billion in data-centre revenue by 2031. The feasibility of that target hinges largely on whether the Tenstorrent deal goes through and how quickly the technology can be integrated. In the meantime, Qualcomm is readying a new brand, “Dragonfly”, under which it will sell custom AI accelerators and silicon. ByteDance is already a major customer for its hyperscale cloud chips.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Qualcomm?
Investors have taken notice. The stock trades at roughly €190, up about 29% year to date and roughly 8% over the past seven days. That still leaves it around 15% shy of its 52-week high of €222.90. Analysts at JPMorgan rate the shares Neutral with a $265 price target, pointing to a mixed picture: handsets are in decline, but automotive and IoT are picking up the slack. The technicals appear balanced — the relative strength index sits at 53.5, neither overbought nor oversold.
Shareholders are also being rewarded while the transformation plays out. Qualcomm has authorised a $20 billion share buyback programme, and the quarterly dividend was raised to $0.92 per share.
Clarity on the roadmap may come soon. Later this month, Qualcomm will host an investor event where it is expected to lay out concrete revenue targets for non-mobile segments and detail its data-centre strategy. A more comprehensive strategy day is scheduled for late June 2026, when the company plans to flesh out its ambitions for the AI and data-centre markets. Whether all this amounts to more than a grand plan on paper should become clear over the next twelve months.
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