Qualcomm's stock is soaring as these big numbers excite Wall Street

By Hannah Pedone

At its investor day, Qualcomm announced a new partnership with Meta Platforms to produce central processing units for the social-media giant

Shares of Qualcomm soared on Wednesday after the company announced new revenue targets.

Qualcomm may be a latecomer in the data-center and custom-chip game, but investors audibly cheered at the company's investor day after its CFO laid out out just how lucrative its diversification away from its handset business could be.

Shares of Qualcomm (QCOM) soared about 13% in after-hours trading Wednesday, after CFO and COO Akash Palkhiwala announced the company increased its fiscal 2029 revenue target to $40 billion, from $22 billion, for its nonhandset businesses. Qualcomm also projected more than $15 billion in data-center revenue by fiscal 2029.

The stock had lost 3.3% in Wednesday's regular session.

At its investor day, Qualcomm announced a new partnership with Meta Platforms (META) to produce central processing units for the social-media giant. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon admitted on stage that the company was late to the data-center chip business, as did Palkhiwala in an interview with MarketWatch.

Yet the company may now have a proof point after landing a deal with a major hyperscaler, while its revenue targets show it can diversify its business away from its chip business for handsets.

Qualcomm unveiled a new road map for its data-center business, with a Dragonfly C1000 CPU that will power Meta's server fleet. The chip will be in production starting in the second half of 2028, according to a press release.

Palkhiwala told MarketWatch in an interview ahead of the investor day that, regarding Qualcomm's business for custom chips, "it's factual that there are the players who are ahead of us." He added, however, that "it is also factual in our minds that we have all the assets that is required to do custom chips."

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At the investor day, Amon said that "a lot of people ask ... in this market, is that too late? ... [It's] never too late for Qualcomm."

He added: "We're now present across the entire compute continuum."

Palkhiwala explained that Qualcomm has access to a "trillion-dollar tab" that exists for data centers, given its range of products. He noted the company's products lines - including CPUs for agentic artificial intelligence, AI accelerators, custom-chip engagements and connectivity chips.

The CFO also said that Qualcomm's ability to deliver "high performance at low power" has historically differentiated the company, and will continue to do so. That comes from its expertise in mobile, where the chip has to run on a small battery and power consumption is essential.

That's helped the company work with Amazon.com (AMZN), Google (GOOGL) (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT) and Meta on several edge products that they make with Qualcomm chips, he noted.

"They already know the credentials of Qualcomm," Palkhiwala said. "It's not that difficult to convince them that we'll deliver ... and that is why we're getting all this traction."

-Hannah Pedone

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06-24-26 2017ET