Qualcomm's Amazon chip deal pushes stock up 10%

Qualcomm signed a multi-generation deal to supply Amazon with custom inference silicon and optical connectivity for AWS AI data centers, the company's largest cloud infrastructure push yet, per Qualcomm's announcement. The connectivity runs up to 1.6T. QCOM shares rose 10% to about $179.84 on the news.

The deal isn't a flat supply contract. Amazon gets a warrant to acquire up to 25 million Qualcomm shares. The size of that stake depends on how much business the two companies actually do together. That structure ties Qualcomm's equity upside directly to AWS deploying the silicon at scale. An announcement alone doesn't move the warrant.

Qualcomm isn't the only chip designer chasing hyperscaler CPU business. Arm introduced its Neoverse CSS N4 platform the same week. The compute subsystem packs 8 to 128 cores per die at up to 3.8GHz, built on TSMC's N3P process. It's aimed at hyperscalers designing their own inference host CPUs, according to Tom's Hardware.

Both moves point at the same shift. Cloud providers want silicon designed around their own inference workloads, not whatever's on a chipmaker's standard roadmap. Amazon's warrant is the clearest evidence yet that a chip vendor will bet its own stock price on that demand showing up. Whether AWS pulls enough volume to make Amazon exercise those warrants is the number to watch next.