Qualcomm and Amazon Partner on Custom AI Data Center Silicon

Qualcomm and Amazon forge long-term AI infrastructure partnership

Qualcomm Technologies has entered a multi-generation collaboration with Amazon to develop customized silicon specifically designed for large-scale AI data centers, with an initial focus on AI inference workloads. The partnership, announced September 8, 2026, also encompasses advanced optical connectivity solutions that will extend to 1.6 terabits per second and beyond.

The collaboration addresses the exponential growth in AI workloads, which are creating unprecedented demands for compute power, storage, networking capacity, memory bandwidth, and energy-efficient infrastructure. Qualcomm will contribute its expertise in power-efficient processing, silicon design, and system-level integration, while Amazon provides its AI infrastructure capabilities through AWS.

Optical connectivity at scale

Beyond custom compute silicon, the partnership includes high-performance optical connectivity solutions designed to handle the bandwidth requirements of modern AI infrastructure. Qualcomm will leverage its SerDes (serializer/deserializer) and optical digital signal processing technologies to support interconnects within Amazon's data center networks.

These optical solutions represent a critical component as AI systems scale, enabling faster data transfer between processors, memory, and storage systems within data centers.

Qualcomm to use AWS for chip design

As part of the expanded relationship, Qualcomm plans to deepen its use of AWS AI infrastructure for its own electronic design automation workloads. The company will utilize Amazon Bedrock and other AWS services with the goal of reducing chip design cycles—potentially accelerating the development of future products.

Why it matters

This partnership signals a strategic shift in how hyperscale cloud providers are approaching AI infrastructure. Rather than relying solely on general-purpose chips or single-generation custom designs, Amazon is committing to a multi-generation roadmap with Qualcomm. This approach suggests AWS anticipates sustained, long-term growth in AI inference workloads and is willing to invest in purpose-built silicon to optimize performance and cost. For Qualcomm, the deal represents a significant expansion beyond its traditional mobile and automotive markets into the lucrative data center sector, where custom silicon for AI workloads has become increasingly important.

"As AI demand accelerates, data center infrastructure will require advances in both computing and connectivity to deliver greater performance with more efficiency," said Cristiano Amon, President and CEO of Qualcomm Incorporated.

Prasad Kalyanaraman, Vice President at AWS, emphasized the partnership's foundation: "This collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies builds on a strong foundation of partnership and reflects our shared commitment to pushing the boundaries of what's possible."

The details were first reported by Qualcomm Technologies in a company announcement.