- Qualcomm to help build custom silicon and optical networking for AWS data centers
- Amazon will acquire 25 million Qualcomm shares, worth over $4 billion
- AWS data centers are more efficient than the industry average, but behind Google's
Qualcomm and Amazon have announced what they have describing as a "multi-generational product collaboration," in which Qualcomm will help build future AI data center infrastructure for AWS.
Because this isn't a one-off project, instead of announcing a single component, the companies are likely to work together across multiple generations of infrastructure spanning both custom inference silicon and high-speed optical connectivity.
Together, the two companies are expected to combine their expertise in AI infrastructure and data centers to improve performance, power efficiency and cost efficiency for a future where data centers exist in even higher volumes.
AWS and Qualcomm to work together on future data centers
The project spans two key areas – custom AI silicon and networking hardware. On the silicon front, Qualcomm will help produce custom AWS silicon with a major focus on inference, giving the chipmaker a potentially big entry into the data center semiconductor market – one that Nvidia has seen major success in.
As for networking, Qualcomm will be behind high-performance optical connectivity for AWS data centers, covering connections of up to 1.6T initially but plans to scale.
With data centers under intense pressure from all angles to boost efficiency and reduce resources consumption, operators are being forced to make progress in all areas, and reducing losses between components with efficient networking is often overlooked compared with outright chip efficiency.
"As AI demand accelerates, data center infrastructure will require advances in both computing and connectivity to deliver greater performance with more efficiency,” Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon summarized.
In Amazon's 2025 sustainability report, it declared a global average PUE of 1.14, which was nearly 9% better than the public cloud industry average of 1.25. Still, Google says it managed a fleet-wide average of 1.09, so Amazon's work with Qualcomm could be key to it overtaking Google.
"By working together on customized silicon and advanced connectivity, we’re delivering more performant, efficient, and cost-effective infrastructure for our customers," AWS VP Prasad Kalyanaraman added.
As part of the deal, Qualcomm has issued warrants for Amazon to acquire around $4.03 billion in stock, per a SEC filing – the equivalent of 25 million shares priced at $161.26. Qualcomm is currently trading at $174.09, up nearly 5% in five days.
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