Shares surged 6.1% in after-hours trading to $231.00, snapping back from a sharp semiconductor sell-off, after JPMorgan handed Qualcomm a vote of confidence that reframes the company's long-term investment case around artificial intelligence infrastructure rather than smartphones.
A 66% Price Target Hike — But the Rating Stays Neutral. JPMorgan analyst Samik Chatterjee kept Qualcomm at Neutral but raised his price forecast to $265 from $160 , a move timed to front-run Qualcomm's June 24 Investor Day. He raised his fiscal 2027 earnings estimate to $11.50 per share from $10.45 after adding roughly $3 billion of data center revenue to his model, valuing the stock at 23 times those earnings. The Neutral rating signals JPMorgan sees the upside but wants proof before turning fully bullish — the math works if the data center story materializes.
The Bet: Data Centers Could Become Qualcomm's Biggest Business. Chatterjee estimates non-handset revenue could rise from about $13 billion in fiscal 2026 to roughly $69 billion by fiscal 2031, with data centers alone accounting for about 35% of total revenue. That would flip a company synonymous with phone chips into one whose largest revenue stream is selling AI processing hardware to cloud giants. Qualcomm's CEO has confirmed that a custom chip deal with a major cloud provider is on track for initial shipments later this year , and a reported agreement to supply millions of AI chips to ByteDance marked an early, concrete win.
Nvidia's PC Offensive Adds a New Risk. While Qualcomm pivots toward data centers, Nvidia introduced a new combined processor for Windows PCs on May 31, marking its expansion into the high-end PC market and posing a direct threat to Qualcomm.
For eight years, Microsoft's Windows on Arm program ran exclusively on Qualcomm silicon — that exclusivity has now lapsed. Qualcomm must now defend its PC beachhead while simultaneously proving it can compete in data centers where Nvidia holds roughly 92% of the accelerator market.
June 24 Is the Real Test. Qualcomm's CEO has promised to unveil a dedicated data center processor and show its performance benchmarks at Investor Day.
JPMorgan expects the company to target revenues exceeding $3 billion by fiscal 2027 and around $35 billion by fiscal 2031 in data centers alone. At today's ~23x trailing earnings, the stock already prices in meaningful diversification success. Investors buying at $231 are betting that Qualcomm can transform from a phone chip supplier into an AI infrastructure company — a story that remains, for now, more blueprint than balance sheet.