The US outfit, mostly known for shoving Snapdragons into smartphones, is now trying its luck in the big-money world of AI infrastructure. Its first customer is Humain, an AI firm funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
The Saudis plan to plug 200 megawatts of Qualcomm’s shiny new AI accelerators into their desert data centres starting in 2026. The move is part of the kingdom’s push to look high-tech while burning through petrodollars.
Qualcomm chief executive Cristiano Amon said: “By establishing advanced AI data centres powered by Qualcomm’s industry-leading inference solutions, we are helping the kingdom create a technology ecosystem that will accelerate its AI ambitions of becoming a hub of intelligent computing.”
The Humain partnership was inked during a Trump-led visit to the Gulf earlier this year. Amon and a few other tech bosses tagged along to show off American silicon diplomacy.
Qualcomm’s new chips, the AI200 and AI250, are due in 2026 and 2027. They will come in rack-scale, liquid-cooled packages, just like Nvidia’s gear. The AI250 includes a new memory architecture that Qualcomm claims offers a “generational leap” in performance and efficiency. No one has seen real numbers yet.
The company is now promising yearly chip launches in a move copied straight from Nvidia’s playbook.
Wall Street lost its mind over the announcement and sent Qualcomm’s market cap flying past $200 billion. It was the company’s biggest daily rise in years. Shares in Arm, whose designs Qualcomm relies on, also rose 4.5 per cent. Nvidia’s stock nudged up 2.5 per cent as the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street decided there was no reason to panic yet.
Nvidia owns more than three quarters of the AI chip market. Everyone from AMD to OpenAI has been scrambling to find alternatives. Qualcomm now joins a crowded queue of challengers hoping to carve out a piece of the AI infrastructure gold rush.
Whether the AI200 and AI250 turn out to be more than just hype is unclear. For now, Qualcomm is banking on oil-backed hype and investor excitement to make its data centre debut look like a power move.