[News] Qualcomm Reportedly Plans China AI Chip Push With Export-Control-Compliant Custom Chips

The data center accelerator market is becoming increasingly crowded, with more major chipmakers entering the segment—including in heavily regulated China. According to Nikkei, citing Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon, the company is working to bring its full suite of four data center product lines to the country, including customized AI accelerators designed to comply with U.S. export restrictions on advanced AI chips.

Building on this strategy, Qualcomm on June 25 unveiled a comprehensive data center portfolio spanning the Dragonfly C1000 CPU, High Bandwidth Compute (HBC) technology designed to address the memory wall with lower energy per token, the Dragonfly AI300 inference accelerator, advanced connectivity solutions, and custom silicon offerings.

Notably, Bloomberg reported in late May that Qualcomm had already secured a deal with ByteDance to supply custom AI data center chips. The chips are reportedly structured to comply with existing U.S. export-control thresholds, underscoring Qualcomm’s efforts to tap AI demand while staying within regulatory limits.

However, Nikkei also points out that Qualcomm is likely to face the same regulatory challenges confronting NVIDIA and other chipmakers in navigating the China market. In June, the Trump administration tightened AI chip export rules, with the U.S. Commerce Department requiring licenses for Chinese companies headquartered in China, even when operating overseas, the report adds.

Against this backdrop, China remained Qualcomm’s largest market in 2025, accounting for 46% of total revenue, primarily driven by smartphone chips, as noted by Nikkei.

Data Center Chip Sales to Reach US$15 Billion by 2029

Meanwhile, Qualcomm remains ambitious on its AI chip business outlook. According to Reuters, its data center chip business is expected to generate US$15 billion in revenue by 2029.

Speaking at the company’s investor event, CFO Akash Palkhiwala, cited by Reuters, said Qualcomm’s data center-related revenue is expected to reach US$5 billion in fiscal 2027, including roughly US$1 billion from newly secured custom silicon customers.

The growth outlook is underpinned by Qualcomm’s High Bandwidth Compute (HBC) architecture. Reuters notes that the design relies on lower-cost memory technologies commonly used in smartphones and notebooks, rather than conventional GPU-centric systems built around expensive HBM.

According to TechNews, Qualcomm expects its first-generation HBC-based AI250 accelerator to launch in mid-2027. The company has also outlined a follow-on roadmap, with a second-generation HBC (HBC Gen2) planned for 2028, to be introduced alongside the AI300 accelerator. Compared with the AI200, the new solution is expected to deliver up to a 54-fold increase in effective bandwidth, while also achieving up to 7x higher bandwidth-per-watt efficiency versus HBM, TechNews adds.

It is worth noting that Qualcomm, as noted by Reuters, earlier disclosed that Microsoft and Meta will adopt its newly launched AI chips, while two additional hyperscale customers have signed on for custom silicon projects.

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(Photo credit: Qualcomm)