Qualcomm said Monday that its next AI accelerator chips are coming soon. The company said its Snapdragon 6s Gen 4 mobile chip is expected to deliver a 36% CPU boost, and new Adreno graphics updates are expected to make the user experience about 59% faster. After this news came out, Qualcomm’s stock jumped by around 12% at midday.
Durga Malladi, who leads Qualcomm’s data center and edge business, said the company first built its strength in other areas, then moved up to the data center level. This shift puts Qualcomm directly against Nvidia, which currently leads the AI chip market.
Qualcomm also said its new AI200 and AI250 systems are planned for 2026 and 2027. These systems are designed for running AI models in data centers, with a focus on speed, memory capacity, and power efficiency. The company is signaling that it does not only want to power phones anymore. It wants to power large AI servers.
In 2022, Qualcomm said it partnered with Meta, Facebook’s parent company, to work on custom chips for virtual reality devices. That update came a few months before Qualcomm faced a fine of nearly $800 million in South Korea over alleged unfair business practices.