Qualcomm and Amazon are collaborating to develop AI inference accelerators for data centers. This partnership focuses on creating hardware designed to run trained AI models, a sector that has become a critical competitive area for major semiconductor companies.
The financial structure of the deal includes a guarantee from Qualcomm in the providing an option to purchase shares for approximately $4 billion. This option allows Amazon to buy Qualcomm stock at a price of $161.26 per share.
The total value of the joint project is estimated to reach up to $60 billion. Following the announcement, Qualcomm's shares rose by more than 7%, recovering from a 1% drop since the same period last year.
Beyond AI chips, the companies are developing high-speed optical communication technologies. These solutions are expected to provide bandwidth up to 1.6 Tbps to meet the growing network equipment needs of data centers.
Qualcomm intends to utilize the AWS (Amazon Web Services) platform to design the new chips, aiming to shorten the overall development cycles.
