
What happened
On its Q4 2026 earnings call, Qualcomm forecast around $650 million in data center revenue in Q1 2027, rising to $5 billion by the end of 2027 and $15 billion by 2029.
Why it matters
That forecast implies data center chips would eventually supply a large share of Qualcomm's business, giving it a second revenue engine beyond phones.
Summaries like this, every morning.
Qualcomm's pitch to investors is a familiar one for a chipmaker whose core market is shrinking: smartphones are its main business, and sales there are down around 20 percent compared to 2025. The company is trying to convince Wall Street that data centers can pick up the slack. Its own numbers show how much ground it needs to cover. Qualcomm's total revenue for 2026 was $10.4 billion, so the $15 billion it forecasts for data center chips by 2029 would be larger than the entire company is today. For context, AMD has said it expects over 80 percent of its revenue to eventually come from data centers, a far more aggressive target than Qualcomm's roughly 30 percent. Qualcomm's plans rest partly on partnerships with Amazon and Meta announced earlier this year, which give it named customers to point to as it builds out the business.
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