Alphawave acquisition is “complementary” to Qualcomm’s CPUs and NPUs, CEO says
Qualcomm is taking aim at the data center chip space, seeking to bolster its assets with the acquisition of data center chip specialist Alphawave Semi in a transaction that values the latter company at $2.4 billion.
It was just a few weeks ago that Qualcomm moved to re-enter the custom CPU market for data centers, with the announcement that it would build custom CPUs that tie in with Nvidia’s solutions. Qualcomm also struck a deal to develop data center and chip infrastructure with Saudi artificial intelligence firm Humain, backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
“We are expanding into the data center,” Cristiano Amon, president and CEO of Qualcomm, said in the final few minutes of his keynote presentation at the recent Computex conference, with a single slide on the topic which called that expansion “the next step in our diversification.” He compared Qualcomm’s move into that market to its move into the established PC market. “If we had something unique and disruptive, there’s room for Qualcomm,” he said. “And I think that’s exactly the approach we’re taking for the data center.”
He said that the company has “some very interesting IP” in the CPU space, which he said becomes increasingly important along with clusters for inference that have very high performance but low power. “Stay tuned, we’re busy. We’re working on this,” he told the Computex crowd. (Watch that keynote in full here.)
Now comes the Alphawave Semi announcement, which further signals Qualcomm’s ambitions in the data center chip market. The company had earlier forays into the space, including the launch of its Centriq processors back in 2017. In 2021, Qualcomm bought silicon startup Nuvia for its CPU tech, framing that acquisition as “redefining computing” in the 5G era. However, Nuvia’s use of Arm-based data center CPUs led to an extended legal clash with Arm over licensing.
Qualcomm said that Alphawave Semi’s product portfolio will complement its own customer Oryon CPUs and Hexagon Neural Processing Unit (NPU) processors. Those processors, the company said in a statement, “are well positioned to meet the growing demand for high-performance, low-power computing, which is being driven by a rapid increase in AI inferencing and the transition to custom CPUs in data centers.”
“Qualcomm’s acquisition of Alphawave Semi represents a significant milestone for us and an opportunity for our business to join forces with a respected industry leader and drive value to our customers,” said Tony Pialis, president and CEO of Alphawave Semi. “By combining our resources and expertise, we will be well-positioned to expand our product offerings, reach a broader customer base, and enhance our technological capabilities. Together, we will unlock new opportunities for growth, drive innovation, and create a leading player in AI compute and connectivity solutions.”
Alphawave Semi’s products are essential infrastructure for uses from data centers and data networking to data storage, Qualcomm said.
“Under Tony’s leadership Alphawave Semi has developed leading high-speed wired connectivity and compute technologies that are complementary to our power-efficient CPU and NPU cores,” said Cristiano Amon, president and CEO of Qualcomm. “Qualcomm’s advanced custom processors are a natural fit for data center workloads. The combined teams share the goal of building advanced technology solutions and enabling next-level connected computing performance across a wide array of high growth areas, including data center infrastructure.”
SemiAnalysis Analyst Sravan Kundojalla said in messages with RCR Wireless News that Qualcomm’s previous efforts in the data center CPU market were put on hold for several years because the company’s management had to focus on dealing with multiple issues in its core business and protecting its positions in the automotive and IoT markets.
“Qualcomm re-entered the server CPU market this year to capitalize on AI frenzy,” Kundojalla said. “As of today, Qualcomm’s DC revenue is near zero. It will be the case for the next 2-3 years as it has to build the software stack, industry ecosystem and build a coherent AI strategy using server CPU, AI inference and Alphawave’s networking IP.”
Kundojalla also noted that Alphawave works closely with Arm and is a licensee of Arm’s IP. (Reuters has reported that as recently as this spring, Arm sought to acquire Alphawave Semi for itself.) That relationship between Alphawave and Arm, he said, could set up a licensing pricing battle similar to the one kicked off with Qualcomm bought Nuvia.
Qualcomm expects the acquisition of Alphawave Semi to close during the first quarter of 2026.
