Qualcomm pushes into data center AI chips with Meta as customer challenging Nvidia
Qualcomm $QCOM is pushing into the data center and named Meta $META as a customer for its new Dragonfly server CPUs. Its AI200 inference chip lands in 2026, the AI250 in 2027, aimed squarely at Nvidia's $NVDA grip on AI hardware. Per CNBC and Bloomberg.
Qualcomm is best known for the chips inside your phone, but it is now making a serious move into the data center, the most lucrative part of the AI hardware market. The company unveiled its Dragonfly chip portfolio and named Meta as a customer for its new server CPUs, a signal that matters because anchor customers are how new entrants prove they belong. Qualcomm also detailed AI inference chips, the AI200 set for 2026 and the AI250 for 2027, positioned to compete on cost and efficiency rather than raw performance. The target is Nvidia , which controls the overwhelming majority of AI accelerator sales. At its investor day Qualcomm roughly doubled its fiscal 2029 non-handset revenue ambition to around 40 billion dollars and set a data center sales goal of about 15 billion dollars for the same year. Whether buyers diversify away from Nvidia is the open question, but landing Meta gives Qualcomm a credibility it did not have a year ago. Per reporting from CNBC and Bloomberg.