Qualcomm, the phone chip maker, is turning to AI data centers as phone sales fall

Qualcomm, the company behind many phone chips, is placing a big bet on AI data centers. On its latest earnings call, it pointed to smartphone sales that are down about 20 percent compared with 2025 and laid out how it plans to make up the gap.

What Qualcomm is planning

Data centers are large buildings packed with computers that run AI services. Qualcomm wants to sell chips for them, through partnerships with companies like Amazon and Meta announced earlier this year.

It forecasts about $650 million in data center revenue in the first quarter of 2027. It expects that to reach $5 billion by the end of 2027 and $15 billion by 2029. For scale, its total revenue for 2026 was $10.4 billion. Qualcomm says data centers should eventually make up about 30 percent of its business.

What is not clear

AMD, another chip maker, expects over 80 percent of its revenue to eventually come from data centers. The article reads that as a sign there is plenty of demand and enough AI money to go around.

The material does not say which chips Qualcomm will sell to data centers, or whether these forecasts will hold. It also does not say what the shift means for the company's phone chips.