Qualcomm on Monday announced the release of a new series of artificial intelligence chips to compete with market leader Nvidia, as the race to profit from building large-scale AI data centers intensifies.
Success could give San Diego-based tech giant Qualcomm a position in data centers that power AI as customers seek alternatives to Nvidia, which controls nearly 90% of the AI chip market.
The Qualcomm AI200 is expected to be the first chip in the series to be commercially available in 2026, followed by the AI250 chip in 2027. The company’s stock price rose 20% on news of the data entry. center market.
The company plans to sell specialized AI server racks with dozens of AI chips that can be installed in data centers, as well as standalone AI chips that companies can purchase and connect to their existing servers.
“Our rich software stack and open ecosystem support make it easier than ever for developers and enterprises to integrate, manage and scale their already trained AI models on our optimized AI inference solutions.” Durga Maradi is a senior vice president at Qualcomm.
Qualcomm is best known for the chips used to power smartphones. It is one of the latest entrants into the AI chip manufacturing space, joining Intel and AMD and competing with Nvidia. Qualcomm is positioning itself as an energy-efficient chip that will cost significantly less to operate in the long run.
These companies see opportunity in building inference chips, which are used by trained AI models to perform real-time calculations and produce outputs such as answering questions or generating images.
Demand for such AI inference chips is increasing as adoption expands, with companies like Amazon, Google, and others developing their own AI chips.
According to , nearly $7 trillion in capital investment will be spent on data centers by 2030.
“It makes sense that Qualcomm wants to diversify beyond smartphones and get into this game,” said Austin Lyons, an analyst and founder of semiconductor publication ChipStrat. “This is a good, different vector that includes not only consumer products but also data centers.”
OpenAI signed a $10 billion deal with Broadcom to design custom AI chips in September and invested in AMD with a promise to buy AMD’s MI450 AI chips.
Qualcomm also signed Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund-backed AI company Humane as its first customer for a new series of chips. The chip is expected to be deployed in Humain’s data centers in 2026.
Mr. Humane plans to launch a $10 billion venture fund and named another California chipmaker, Glock, in May., Supply inference chips to data centers.
Abu Dhabi-backed AI development holding company G42, which owns a stake in U.S. chipmaker Cerebra Systems, plans to build a 5-gigawatt UAE-U.S. AI campus during President Trump’s May visit.
The Gulf nation has emerged as a powerhouse in the AI field, as the Trump White House overhauled Biden-era chip export regulations and brokered a multibillion-dollar deal to supply the United States with the advanced chips it needs to fuel its AI ambitions.
