Qualcomm teases ‘dedicated CPU for agentic experiences’ and ‘agentic smartphones’
Enters the custom AI silicon business with secret silicon for an un-named hyperscaler
Qualcomm has quietly entered the market for custom hyperscale silicon, and datacenter CPUs
Speaking on the company’s Q2 earnings call, CEO Cristiano Amon said the company will provide custom product to “a leading hyperscaler,” expects shipments “in the December quarter” and is “thinking about a multi-generation engagement.”
Pressed on the details, Amon said Qualcomm is already working on a data center CPU and high-performance AI inference accelerators, and gained the ability to create custom ASICs by acquiring Alphawave.
He also revealed that Qualcomm has built what he described as “a dedicated CPU for agentic experiences in the data center.”
In Amon’s telling, AI kicked off with GPUs for training, dedicated inferencing hardware was the next necessity, but the market is now entering a new phase in which it is important to “generate demand for tokens” to power agentic AI.
“I think when you think about agents, CPU becomes very important,” he said, so Qualcomm has built one.
The company will stage an investor day in June at which it will reveal more about its plans.
The CEO also teased the advent of what he calls “agentic smartphones,” and cited recent products from Chinese handset-makers as examples. He mentioned a ZTE phone that includes the Doubao personal assistant developed by ByteDance, and Xiaomi’s miclaw – an AI-powered assistant that’s integrated with the OS kernel and divines smartphone users’ intent and then drives third-party tools to make it happen.
Asked what agentic smartphones will mean, Amon said “We see interesting associations now starting to form between smartphones and AI companies. We're starting to see some very interesting dynamics there, which is changing the nature of designs.”
Those dynamics mean smartphone designs are “moving towards products [that] have much more capable CPU.” They may also need more memory, which is currently in short supply. Amon said “we see new memory players coming and building capacity. So we're going to have to monitor the situation and see what happens in 2027.”
The CEO is already keenly aware of the memory shortage, because it’s hurting Qualcomm as smartphone manufacturers – especially Chinese companies – decide to build fewer units.
Amon and CFO Akash Palkhiwala both predicted demand will bottom out in Q3, then rebound.
The CEO also revealed that Qualcomm expects to win 70 percent of Samsung’s SoC business this year and next, up from its usual 50 percent. Samsung is trying to improve its Exynos SoCs, and make more of them. Clearly the Korean giant isn’t yet ready to stand on its own two feet.
The company won $10.6 billion of revenue for the quarter, down three percent year-over-year. Net income shot up by 162 percent, to $7.37 billion.
Amon said Qualcomm will highlight its plans to diversify at its June investor event, and emphasized how the company’s automotive business means it is already heading down the road to more sources of revenue and growth.
“In Q2, we exceeded $5 billion in annualized revenues for the first time, and we expect to exit fiscal '26 at a run rate above $6 billion,” he said, before pointing out that over one million cars now offer advanced driver assistance and automated driving powered by Qualcomm processors.
He also offered one more tease: “By the end of the fiscal year, we will begin commercial shipments of our fifth-generation Snapdragon Digital Chassis platform.”
That hardware will come with three times higher CPU throughput, a threefold increase in GPU capability, and 12 times higher NPU performance. And because it’s 2026, the silicon will also support what Amon described as “in-vehicle agents and processing for Level 3 and Level 4 autonomous driving.”
The company’s PC chips were deemed worthy of just a few fleeting mentions. ®