Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) Chief Financial Officer and Operating Officer Akash Palkhiwala has outlined an ambitious pivot away from the company’s smartphone-dominated past toward artificial intelligence, data centers, and robotics.
Palkhiwala spoke exclusively with TheStreet at Snapdragon Summit 2026 in Maui, Hawaii, where he detailed a sweeping transformation in how Qualcomm views its own identity and revenue streams.
“Jump over to today, think of us as a processing and AI leader for cloud and edge devices,” Palkhiwala said, describing a company that has moved well beyond its mobile chip origins.
Qualcomm’s roots trace back to a major early bet on Code Division Multiple Access, or CDMA, technology, which enabled users to share limited wireless spectrum more efficiently across cellular networks.
The company made its first CDMA call in 1989, and four years later the technology was standardized as IS-95, laying the groundwork for modern cellular infrastructure globally.
Qualcomm built enormous wealth from that bet by earning revenue both from chips that powered mobile devices and from patents that other companies across the industry were required to license.
Now the company faces a far more competitive landscape, entering the AI and data center space against established rivals including Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD).
In Qualcomm’s fiscal third quarter, reported in July, handset revenue fell 20% from a year earlier to $5.1 billion, partly reflecting weaker demand amid rising memory costs, adding urgency to the diversification push.
Palkhiwala laid out a clear structural vision for where Qualcomm’s revenue will come from going forward, describing three business pillars of roughly equal size. “In the next two years, we’ll become this company with three major businesses: data center, smartphones, and auto/IoT,” he explained. “Think of it as three legs of the stool with each almost equal in size.”
Qualcomm announced a deal with Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) earlier this month to develop custom silicon and infrastructure for AI data centers, marking its formal entry into a market it had not previously competed in.
Palkhiwala acknowledged the competitive dynamics of data center spending but expressed confidence in Qualcomm’s positioning with major cloud partners. “These companies are excited to be working with us and we see data center and AI as a tremendous opportunity,” he said.
On the topic of Apple developing its own modems, a move that had previously raised investor concerns about Qualcomm’s smartphone business, Palkhiwala was direct. “We’re taking advantage of Agentic AI, and to me, Apple making their own modems is old news,” he said.
Beyond data centers and automotive, Palkhiwala pointed to robotics as the company’s next major growth category, one not yet included in any current financial targets. “We view robotics as an automotive-like market. Autonomous driving is similar to robotics, using the same type of sensing and requiring AI in the same way. We’re seeing it as an extension of our auto business within the larger category of physical AI,” he said.
Qualcomm currently has a $40 billion revenue target set for 2029, and Palkhiwala suggested robotics could eventually push that number higher. “We hope to raise the $40 billion target again,” he said. “That would be the goal.”
CEO Cristiano Amon has described the broader strategy as transforming Qualcomm into a platform company, capable of serving industries far beyond the smartphone market that originally made it famous.
