Qualcomm Stock Rises After AWS Deal for Custom AI Chips

Qualcomm shares rose roughly 4% after the company announced a multi‑generational collaboration with Amazon Web Services to supply custom AI inference processors and high‑speed optical connectivity for AWS data centers.

The agreement covers a series of custom processors optimized for AI inference-the step where trained models generate outputs-and joint development of optical solutions that can scale to 1.6 terabits per second using Qualcomm’s SerDes and optical DSP technologies. Qualcomm also plans to increase its use of AWS infrastructure, including Amazon Bedrock, to speed electronic design automation and shorten chip design cycles.

The stock jumped as much as 10% in early trading before giving back some gains to trade about 4% higher later in the session. On a year‑to‑date basis, Qualcomm shares are up about 1.5%, behind the VanEck Semiconductor ETF, which has risen more than 50% in 2026.

As part of the deal, Qualcomm issued Amazon a warrant to buy up to 25 million QCOM shares at $161.26 per share. Amazon received an initial tranche of 3.75 million shares immediately; the remaining shares are tied to commercial milestones that Qualcomm says could represent as much as $60 billion in business. The warrant expires on Sept. 3, 2036.

In a joint statement, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon wrote, “As AI demand accelerates, data center infrastructure will require advances in both computing and connectivity to deliver greater performance with more efficiency.” The companies described the collaboration as spanning multiple product generations of chips and connectivity to address rising bandwidth and compute needs in large AI deployments.

The AWS agreement is Qualcomm’s third named hyperscaler partnership after earlier disclosures involving Meta and Microsoft. At its June 2026 Investor Day, Qualcomm presented a data center roadmap that included the Dragonfly C1000 CPU, a High Bandwidth Compute architecture, and AI200 and AI250 inference accelerators developed for Humain. Qualcomm said Meta will be a customer for the Dragonfly C1000, with production expected in the second half of 2028, and that Microsoft supports its High Bandwidth Compute design for Azure. Qualcomm has a stated target of $15 billion in data center revenue by fiscal 2029.

The collaboration focuses on inference workloads and includes joint work on optics for data center networks to handle growing bandwidth demands. AWS already deploys in‑house silicon for cloud customers, including Trainium for training and Graviton CPUs. In an April shareholder letter, AWS CEO Andy Jassy wrote that annualized revenue from Amazon’s chip products was roughly $20 billion, with a path toward $50 billion if AWS expands sales to outside customers.