Qualcomm shares climbed 11.8% in pre-open trading following an Investor Day presentation in New York City that recast the company’s growth trajectory toward data center applications for artificial intelligence workloads.
At the center of the presentation was the Dragonfly C1000, a 250-core server processor built on Qualcomm’s bespoke Oryon architecture and targeted at agentic AI tasks. Management concurrently raised its fiscal 2029 non-handset revenue target to $40 billion - nearly double its prior expectation of $22 billion - and set a specific data center revenue objective of $15 billion for the same fiscal year.
CEO Cristiano Amon framed the shift as the result of years of execution, saying the company has been "collecting assets" and now possesses what it considers a comprehensive portfolio to enter a new phase in the data center market.
The product and target updates were reinforced by public endorsements from major cloud customers. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg joined the event to confirm a multi-generational agreement to deploy the Dragonfly C1000 in Meta’s server fleet. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also appeared, stating that Azure will adopt Qualcomm’s High-Bandwidth Compute architecture.
Qualcomm announced an all-stock acquisition of AI software firm Modular in a transaction valued at approximately $3.92 billion. Modular’s technology is described as enabling AI models to run across processors from multiple vendors - including Nvidia and AMD - without architecture-specific code, positioning it as an open-ecosystem alternative to Nvidia’s CUDA platform.
The company added that it has secured two custom silicon agreements with unnamed hyperscalers, with deployments slated to begin in late 2026.
Market momentum behind the announcements was amplified by broader semiconductor optimism. Micron Technology issued strong forward guidance after the market close on Wednesday, contributing to an uplift in sentiment across the chip sector and helping lift Nasdaq futures into the current session.
Analyst positioning ahead of the event had already been shifting. JPMorgan placed Qualcomm on a Positive Catalyst Watch and raised its price target to $265. Street opinion, however, remained divided: some analysts are betting on a successful AI pivot while others cited smartphone cyclicality and the impending loss of Apple modem business as headwinds.
Taken together, the combination of a clear data center roadmap with named hyperscaler customers, the Modular acquisition aimed at addressing a historically limited developer ecosystem, and positive signals from peers in the semiconductor supply chain produced one of the largest single-session moves for the stock in recent memory. Shares rose from a prior close of $197.41 to reach $220.76 in pre-market trading even as the broader Nasdaq traded under mild pressure.
Analysis and implications
The disclosures at Investor Day shift Qualcomm’s narrative from primarily handset-focused revenues toward a multi-pronged data center strategy that couples new custom silicon with software intended to ease deployment across heterogeneous hardware. The combination of product, customer commitments and a software acquisition was the principal catalyst for the market’s strong positive reaction.