AWS and Qualcomm are collaborating on the development of their own AI inference chips
AWS and Qualcomm are collaborating on the development of custom AI inference chips and optical interconnects with a capacity of 1.6 Tb/s. Qualcomm uses AWS Bedrock for chip design; this is its third major data center contract since June, with a goal of 15 billion USD in revenue by 2029.
Qualcomm is designing custom chips for AWS focused on AI inference across several product generations. The collaboration also includes the development of optical interconnects with a capacity of up to 1.6 Tb/s, intended to handle growing data traffic in AI infrastructure. According to the source, Qualcomm brings expertise in energy-efficient chip design, while Amazon provides cloud infrastructure; Qualcomm also uses AWS Bedrock services in chip design, which is intended to accelerate the development process.
The Amazon deal is the third major data center contract for Qualcomm since June — Meta is deploying the Dragonfly C1000 server processor, and Microsoft is introducing the HBC memory architecture from Qualcomm in Azure. According to Qualcomm, the goal is to reach 15 billion USD in data center revenue by 2029.
AWS is thus supplementing its own Trainium, Graviton and Nitro chip lines with designs from Qualcomm, targeting inference workloads where energy consumption per token significantly affects operating costs. According to the source, the focus on efficiency is also key for Qualcomm at the other end of the spectrum — in edge devices; in March, the company released a framework for running reasoning models on smartphones.
Why it matters
For AWS, this is another step toward diversifying hardware for AI inference beyond its own Trainium chips and external GPUs, which could eventually affect the price and availability of computing power for cloud customers. For Qualcomm, the move into the data center segment following contracts from Meta and Microsoft confirms a significant business expansion beyond the mobile market, backed by a specific financial target for 2029.
Relevant practical impact
What this means
For a business
AWS is expanding its own silicon portfolio with chips designed with Qualcomm, diversifying the supply chain for AI inference alongside its in-house Trainium, Graviton and Nitro lines; for Qualcomm, this is the third major contract in the data center segment since June (after Meta and Microsoft), as part of the goal of reaching 15 billion USD in data center revenue by 2029.
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