Key Takeaways
- Shares of QCOM climbed more than 12% in pre-market hours following the company’s New York Investor Day presentation
- The semiconductor company increased its fiscal 2029 non-handset revenue projection to $40 billion from a prior $22 billion estimate
- Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, announced a partnership to integrate Qualcomm’s Dragonfly C1000 CPU into Meta’s data center operations
- Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed that Azure will utilize Qualcomm’s High-Bandwidth Compute technology
- The chipmaker completed an all-stock acquisition of AI software company Modular, valued at approximately $3.92 billion
Shares of Qualcomm experienced a dramatic rally on Thursday morning, climbing from Wednesday’s closing price of $197.41 to reach $220.76 during pre-market hours—representing a gain exceeding 12%. The surge followed the company’s Investor Day presentation held Wednesday evening in New York City.
The impressive price movement stemmed from a series of significant announcements that repositioned Qualcomm’s strategic narrative toward AI-driven data center infrastructure, moving beyond its conventional smartphone semiconductor operations.
The most striking disclosure: Qualcomm elevated its fiscal 2029 non-handset revenue projection to $40 billion—approaching double its earlier forecast of $22 billion.
Breaking down these projections, the semiconductor manufacturer expects to generate $15 billion from data center operations, over $14 billion from Internet of Things applications, and $10 billion from automotive sectors by fiscal year 2029. Additionally, the company established an adjusted earnings per share goal exceeding $18 for that timeframe, substantially higher than Wall Street’s current consensus estimate of $15.26.
Chief Executive Cristiano Amon informed stakeholders that the organization has been “executing, collecting assets,” and now possesses a “comprehensive portfolio to enter the next phase of the data center” market.
Introducing the Dragonfly C1000 and the Meta Partnership
Central to these announcements is the Dragonfly C1000—a 250-core server processor engineered on Qualcomm’s proprietary Oryon architecture and optimized specifically for agentic artificial intelligence operations.
Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg joined the event to announce a multi-generation partnership for implementing the Dragonfly C1000 throughout Meta’s data center ecosystem. Manufacturing is scheduled to commence during the latter half of 2028.
Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella similarly confirmed Azure’s adoption of Qualcomm’s High-Bandwidth Compute (HBC) technology—a processor category leveraging more affordable memory technology typically found in mobile devices and personal computers, offering an alternative to the costly high-bandwidth memory components utilized by Nvidia.
Acquiring Modular for AI Software Capabilities
Qualcomm further revealed its acquisition of Modular, an artificial intelligence software startup, through an all-stock transaction valued at roughly $3.92 billion.
Modular’s technology enables AI systems to operate across semiconductor products from various manufacturers—including those from Nvidia and AMD—eliminating the requirement for architecture-specific programming. This acquisition establishes Qualcomm as a more open-ecosystem competitor to Nvidia’s widely-adopted CUDA framework.
The chipmaker also revealed two custom silicon partnerships with undisclosed hyperscale cloud providers, with deployment beginning in late 2026.
These announcements coincided with Micron Technology’s strong fiscal third-quarter earnings report, which elevated optimism throughout the semiconductor industry and pushed Nasdaq futures higher.
Before the investor presentation, JPMorgan had added QCOM to its Positive Catalyst Watch list and increased its price objective to $265.
The current Wall Street consensus rating stands at Hold, comprising 19 Hold recommendations, 8 Buy ratings, and 4 Sell opinions, with a mean price target of $187.33. These assessments will likely undergo revision as financial analysts evaluate Wednesday’s revelations.
GuruFocus calculates the stock’s fair value at $175.34, indicating shares were trading approximately 12.6% above this assessed intrinsic valuation at pre-market price levels.
