Qualcomm is in advanced discussions with a leading hyperscale customer about developing custom silicon for data center applications, CEO Cristiano Amon told investors. Initial shipments are expected in December 2026, although the customer has not been publicly identified and no contract has been announced.

Amon discussed the potential deal during Qualcomm’s Q2 FY2026 earnings call on April 29, 2026. He described the prospective customer as a leading hyperscaler, a term commonly used for large cloud service providers that purchase chips at significant scale.

Qualcomm characterized the discussions as advanced, indicating that they have progressed beyond an exploratory stage but have not yet resulted in a signed agreement. The company is also presenting the relationship as multi-generational, suggesting a series of custom designs for the same customer across several product cycles rather than a single chip program.

Qualcomm’s Dragonfly data center portfolio

The company’s data center strategy is centered on Dragonfly, a product family that covers multiple parts of the computing stack. The portfolio includes the C1000 central processing unit, as well as the AI200 and AI300 series of inference accelerators. It also includes high-bandwidth memory.

High-bandwidth memory is a type of memory built to sit close to processors and move data at very high rates, a design commonly paired with the accelerator chips that handle AI workloads.

Inference refers to the process of running an artificial intelligence model after it has been trained. While training generally creates a model, inference occurs each time the model responds to a user or performs a task. Qualcomm is focusing on this area as AI services expand and serve larger numbers of users.

Qualcomm’s ability to develop customer-specific chips was strengthened by its $2.4 billion acquisition of Alphawave, a semiconductor company specializing in high-speed connectivity technology used to move data inside data center systems. The transaction expanded the company’s capabilities in application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs. These chips are designed for a particular customer’s workload rather than being sold as general-purpose, off-the-shelf products, an approach that has become an established practice among the largest cloud operators as they tailor infrastructure to their specific workloads.

Qualcomm’s return to the data center market

The discussions mark Qualcomm’s second attempt to establish a presence in the data center market. The company exited the business in 2018 after stepping away from an earlier server-chip effort.

Qualcomm has set a target of more than $15 billion in annual data center revenue by fiscal 2029. It has also identified a $1 trillion total addressable market for data center solutions and said it intends to capture a portion of that market.

The potential hyperscaler relationship would provide an early indication of whether Qualcomm’s data center strategy can begin generating revenue on the timeline set by management. Shipments expected in December 2026 would precede the fiscal 2029 revenue target, but the company has not disclosed the customer or confirmed a final agreement.

Advanced discussions can still end without a contract. Until Qualcomm confirms an agreement, the opportunity remains prospective rather than booked revenue. The markers to watch are a signed contract, public identification of the customer, and whether initial shipments begin in December 2026 as expected.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Diego Almada Lopez. More information about CryptoBriefing’s content creation and review process is available in its Editorial Policy.