Qualcomm Unveils Plan to Expand Beyond Smartphone Chips

Qualcomm is pursuing an expansion strategy designed to reduce its reliance on the traditional smartphone-chip market and establish a broader position across the rapidly growing artificial intelligence industry. The company has been investing in technologies spanning edge devices, cloud infrastructure, automotive systems, industrial applications and robotics as demand for AI computing continues to increase.

A major part of the strategy is Qualcomm’s move into AI data-centre infrastructure. In September, the company announced a multi-generational collaboration with Amazon to develop customised silicon for AWS data centres, focusing particularly on AI inference. Qualcomm said the partnership will also involve high-bandwidth optical connectivity for data-centre networks as demand for computing and energy-efficient infrastructure increases.

Qualcomm has also set ambitious financial targets for its diversification programme. The company has raised its fiscal 2029 target for non-handset revenue to $40 billion, with more than $15 billion expected from data-centre activities. It is also targeting $10 billion in automotive revenue and more than $14 billion from IoT businesses, including industrial, networking, robotics and personal computing applications.

The company’s latest Snapdragon platforms demonstrate another part of the strategy. Qualcomm recently unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, designed to support increasingly sophisticated AI functions directly on smartphones. The platforms are built around Qualcomm’s Oryon CPU architecture and include enhanced AI processing capabilities aimed at allowing devices to run more complex AI models locally.

Beyond smartphones and data centres, Qualcomm is expanding into robotics, automotive technology and other forms of physical AI. The company has described a future in which AI computing is distributed across phones, PCs, vehicles, robots and cloud systems rather than concentrated in traditional data centres. Its strategy reflects the broader industry shift toward AI agents capable of understanding context, processing information and carrying out tasks across connected devices.