Qualcomm has secured Amazon Web Services (AWS) as an artificial intelligence (AI) data center chip customer.
By granting stock purchase rights linked to up to $60 billion (approx. KRW80 trillion) in purchases, the company aims to expand its business structure, which is currently focused on mobile semiconductors, into AI infrastructure.
Qualcomm announced on September 8 (local time) that it signed a multi-year agreement with AWS to jointly develop multi-generational custom AI inference semiconductors and connectivity technologies.
The two companies will develop chips that improve the computing performance and power efficiency of AI data centers. Qualcomm will leverage its power efficiency technology and chip design expertise accumulated from mobile semiconductors, while AWS will provide AI infrastructure such as “Amazon Bedrock.” The two companies also agreed to cooperate on developing ultra-high-speed optical connectivity solutions that support high bandwidth.
The contract also includes stock purchase warrants linked to AWS's purchasing performance. Qualcomm gives Amazon the right to purchase Qualcomm common stock at $161.26 per share.
The structure initially grants 3.75 million shares, and if Amazon's purchases reach up to $60 billion over the next 10 years, the total warrant issuance will increase up to 25 million shares. If Amazon acquires and exercises all of them, the stock purchase amount will reach approximately $4 billion (approx. KRW5.4 trillion). The actual revenue and equity acquisition size will vary depending on future orders and whether contract conditions are met.
“With the surge in AI demand, data center infrastructure will require advancements in both computing and connectivity to deliver higher performance efficiently,” said Cristiano Amon, CEO of Qualcomm. “Based on Qualcomm's decades-long leadership in power-efficient computing, we will deliver breakthrough performance and enable next-generation AI infrastructure.”
Qualcomm is diversifying its business into data centers, automotive, and PCs in response to slowing smartphone market growth and customers' expansion into in-house chip development. In particular, Amon has nurtured AI inference semiconductors and data center connectivity technologies as new growth engines, setting a goal to expand data center revenue to $15 billion by 2029.
In the AI semiconductor industry, transactions combining large-scale supply contracts with stock purchase rights are spreading. By allowing customers to acquire supplier stock at a predetermined price when purchasing a certain volume of chips, this method encourages long-term purchases and aligns the interests of customers and suppliers.
In fact, AMD, considered a rival to Nvidia, signed a contract last October granting OpenAI the right to acquire up to 10% of its stake based on chip purchase amounts, and Marvell Technology recently transferred up to $12.2 billion in stock purchase rights to Google.
