(News Bulletin 247) – The company has launched two chips intended to enable the development of large-scale AI models.

Qualcomm signs an impressive surge on the stock market this Monday, October 27. The electronic components specialist is jumping to New York after announcing the release of new chips dedicated to artificial intelligence (AI) in a desire to compete with the giants Nvidia and AMD.

Around 4:20 p.m. French time, Qualcomm shares rose 12.6% to $190.00, after hitting their highest since July 2024. Its valuation increased sharply to approach $200 billion.

“Qualcomm Technologies today announces the launch of its next generation of artificial intelligence solutions (…) for data centers,” the company said in a statement released Monday.

Booming AI spending

These two new series of chips (AI200 and AI250), marketed in 2026 and 2027 respectively, will be used primarily for inference, that is to say, to generate responses to user requests, rather than to build AI models or train them.

Until now, Qualcomm’s activity was mainly focused on more traditional technologies. The company notably generated a large part of its turnover thanks to chips for smartphones.

The company’s entry into the data center race represents new competition in a market dominated by behemoths Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

Spending on AI is exploding. They are expected to reach around 1,500 billion dollars worldwide in 2025, according to the American firm Gartner, then more than 2,000 in 2026, or nearly 2% of global GDP.

On the energy side, the global footprint of AI could reach 200 gigawatts by 2030 (more than three times the power of the French nuclear fleet), half of which is in the United States.

On Monday, Qualcomm assured that its new chips will be energy efficient.

(With AFP)