Shares shifted as Qualcomm rose 2.4% to $208.96 on the morning of its June 24 Investor Day, where management is expected to lay out the most detailed picture yet of the company's pivot from smartphone-chip giant to AI data-center contender. The event has become a key swing factor for investor sentiment , arriving after a volatile stretch that saw the stock whipsaw between $122 and $260 over the past year.
A Three-Pronged Data-Center Pitch Needs Big Numbers to Convince
CEO Cristiano Amon has described a strategy built around CPUs, inference accelerators — chips designed to run AI models rather than train them — and custom chips designed for individual customers.
JPMorgan expects Qualcomm to target more than $3 billion in data-center revenue by fiscal 2027 and $35 billion by fiscal 2031. Those are ambitious figures for a company that is re-entering data-center silicon after exiting the market in 2018 . Wall Street is split: JPMorgan raised its price target to $265 , while Bank of America lifted only to $195 and kept an Underperform rating .
A Secret Hyperscaler Deal Is the First Real Test
During the Q2 earnings call, Amon disclosed a "multi-generation engagement" with an unnamed large cloud customer, with initial custom-chip shipments slated for December.
That quarter also delivered $10.6 billion in revenue, with automotive hitting a record $1.3 billion — up 38% year over year. If a second hyperscaler signs on, the narrative shifts from promise to pipeline.
The $7 Billion Clock Is Still Ticking The urgency behind today's pivot is existential. Apple's complete exit from Qualcomm's modem business is expected to create a $7.3–$7.8 billion annual revenue shortfall, fully materializing between 2027 and 2028.
Amon has said the company can still hit its $22 billion non-handset revenue target by fiscal 2029 , but the gap between losing Apple's cash and ramping data-center revenue is uncomfortably narrow.
Nvidia's PC Ambitions Add a Second Front
Nvidia entered the PC chip market at Computex 2026, rattling shares of Qualcomm, Intel, and AMD. Qualcomm now faces competitive pressure in PCs — another pillar of its diversification story — at the same time it is spending to break into data centers.
The bottom line: Qualcomm is asking investors to re-price it as an AI infrastructure company before it has shipped meaningful AI infrastructure. Today's Investor Day must show that the revenue is coming fast enough to outrun the Apple decline — or the stock's recent rebound may have gotten ahead of itself.