Nvidia was rising Tuesday as investors gauged the competitive threat posed by Qualcomm’s artificial-intelligence chips and digested a flurry of announcements at the company’s conference in Washington,

Qualcomm is evolving from a smartphone chipmaker to a comprehensive AI technology leader. The transition won’t happen overnight, but the strategy appears appealing and the timing is favorable.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said earlier this year that the Washington-based company could shrink its workforce by embracing AI. The firm is part of a cohort of large-cap companies that have seen their AI-related productivity increase as the technology becomes mainstream.

Qualcomm is stepping into the high-stakes AI chip race with two new processors, aiming to challenge giants like Nvidia and AMD. Their focus isn’t on training AI models—but on making the behind-the-scenes ‘inference’ phase more efficient and affordable.

Qualcomm announced new chips for AI data centers on Monday, in a move that could mean more competition for leading AI chipmakers such as Nvidia and AMD.

Available beginning in 2026, the AI200 is both the name of Qualcomm’s individual AI accelerator and the full server rack it slots into, complete with a Qualcomm CPU. The AI250 is Qualcomm’s next-generation AI accelerator and server coming in 2027. A third chip and server are scheduled for 2028.

These are Qualcomm's next-generation AI inference-optimized solutions for data centers, and they bring with them support for gobs of memory.

Qualcomm entered the datacenter AI chip market with 2026-2027 products and a $1 billion Saudi deal despite specs trailing competitors.