Qualcomm will design custom silicon for Amazon Web Services' artificial intelligence data centres under a $4 billion arrangement reported on September 9, 2026 by Manufacturing Dive. As part of the deal, Qualcomm is issuing an Amazon affiliate a warrant over 25 million Qualcomm shares.
Chips and connectivity
The collaboration covers custom processors for AI inference workloads inside AWS data centres, plus optical connectivity technology running at up to 1.6 terabits per second, according to CIO Dive. Alongside it sits a purchase agreement under which Amazon may buy up to $60 billion of Qualcomm processors and other technology over ten years. The warrant expires on September 3, 2036. Both outlets described identical terms — the $4 billion figure, the 25 million shares issued to an Amazon affiliate, the $60 billion purchase ceiling over ten years and the 2036 expiry — with CIO Dive reporting the arrangement on 11 September, two days after Manufacturing Dive.
"Qualcomm is pleased to work with AWS on customized silicon and connectivity solutions, bringing decades of leadership in advanced processing and power-efficient compute, to deliver breakthrough performance and enable the next generation of AI infrastructure," said Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm's president and chief executive.
Qualcomm's data centre push
The agreement builds on Qualcomm's Dragonfly C1000 data centre central processing unit and supports the company's stated target of exceeding $15 billion in data centre revenue by fiscal year 2029 — a figure that would mark a substantial shift for a company still best known for smartphone chips.
Akash Palkhiwala, Qualcomm's chief financial officer and chief operating officer, framed the deal as part of that shift, saying the company will be "truly diversified across handsets, data center and industrial IoT and automotive."
What happens next
The structure — equity upside for the customer, a long purchase commitment for the supplier — has become a recognisable feature of AI infrastructure deals, and it adds Amazon to the small group of hyperscalers placing equity-linked bets on custom silicon rather than buying merchant accelerators alone. For Qualcomm, the agreement converts a data centre ambition into contracted demand: the $60 billion ceiling is a maximum rather than a firm order, but it gives the company a named anchor customer as it competes for AI infrastructure spending dominated so far by Nvidia and by hyperscalers' own in-house designs. Neither company has published a timeline for first silicon, and the warrant's ten-year horizon suggests the parties expect the relationship to be measured in product generations rather than quarters.