Qualcomm Stock Jumps 15% on $1 Billion Saudi Arabia AI Datacenter Deal

TLDR

• Qualcomm announced two new datacenter AI chips, AI200 and AI250, launching in 2026 and 2027 respectively
• The company signed a 200 MW capacity deal with Saudi Arabia’s HUMAIN initiative worth an estimated $1 billion
• Qualcomm’s chips will use LPDDR memory and PCIe connections instead of the more powerful HBM and NVLink used by competitors
• Wolfe Research maintains Peerperform rating, noting Qualcomm’s specs appear less robust than Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom offerings
• Qualcomm stock jumped 15% to $182.23 on the announcement, reaching a 52-week high

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Qualcomm unveiled two new datacenter AI chips on Monday as the company pushes into a market currently dominated by Nvidia. The AI200 and AI250 chips are designed for memory-intensive AI applications and enterprise customers.

The chipmaker also revealed details of a deal with HUMAIN, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign AI initiative. The agreement calls for 200 megawatts of capacity in 2026, building on a letter of intent signed in May 2025.

Qualcomm shares climbed nearly 15% to $182.23 following the announcement. The stock reached a 52-week high on the news.

QUALCOMM Incorporated, QCOM

The AI200 chip will launch in 2026, with the AI250 following in 2027. Both products target the growing datacenter AI infrastructure market.

Qualcomm spent $2.4 billion in June to acquire Alphawave, bringing datacenter semiconductor design capabilities to the company. The acquisition supports the chipmaker’s expansion beyond its core smartphone business.

The company also released accelerator cards and server racks alongside the chip announcement. These products complete Qualcomm’s datacenter hardware lineup.

Technical Specifications Raise Questions

Wolfe Research maintained its Peerperform rating on Qualcomm after reviewing the announcement. The firm noted that Qualcomm’s specifications appear less powerful than current offerings from competitors.

The new Qualcomm chips will use LPDDR memory instead of HBM memory found in rival products. They will also rely on PCIe for scale up rather than Ethernet or NVLink technologies.

Wolfe Research analysts estimate the HUMAIN deal could be worth approximately $1 billion. This represents less value per gigawatt compared to AMD’s recent $15 billion per gigawatt agreement with OpenAI.

Qualcomm has not released details on power consumption, performance metrics, or pricing for the new chips. These specifications will determine how the products compete against established players.

The AI200 and AI250 focus on inference workloads. These are the calculations required to run trained AI models in production environments.

Market Position and Competition

Nvidia currently dominates the datacenter AI chip market with a $4.64 trillion market capitalization. The company posted 71.55% revenue growth over the last twelve months.

Qualcomm faces competition from multiple chipmakers in the datacenter space. Intel announced its Crescent Island AI chip earlier in October, also targeting a 2026 launch.

AMD and Broadcom both offer competing solutions with more advanced specifications. These companies have established customer relationships in the datacenter market.

Qualcomm’s market capitalization stands at $185.89 billion. The company has gained 4.6% over the past year.

The chipmaker trades at a 16.39x price-to-earnings ratio. Revenue grew 15.82% in the most recent quarter.

Qualcomm pays a quarterly dividend of $0.89 per share, yielding 2.18%. The next dividend payment is scheduled for December 18, 2025.

Benchmark analysts maintain a Buy rating on Qualcomm stock with a $200 price target. The highest analyst price target reaches $225.

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