Alphabet, the parent company of Google, disclosed on Friday that it held nearly 3 million shares of Qualcomm worth $547.9 million as of September 30, 2026. Alphabet built the position during the third quarter, just as Qualcomm is trying to turn itself from a smartphone chip supplier into a contender in AI data-center hardware.
The disclosure came in a regulatory filing covering Alphabet's quarterly holdings. Alphabet also disclosed that it increased its stake in SpaceX to about 555 million shares, up from 551.2 million.
Qualcomm shares rose more than 3% in premarket trading on Friday. The stock had fallen more than 9% on Thursday during a broader selloff that followed Democrats winning the US midterms and Qualcomm's mixed fiscal fourth-quarter results.
Key facts
- 01Alphabet held nearly 3 million Qualcomm shares worth $547.9 million as of September 30, 2026, a position built in Q3.
- 02Qualcomm shares rose more than 3% in Friday premarket trading after falling more than 9% on Thursday.
- 03Qualcomm targets $15 billion in annual data-center chip revenue by 2029, part of a $40 billion non-handset goal.
- 04Amazon agreed in September to buy up to $60 billion of Qualcomm AI data-center chips, with stock warrants attached.
- 05Alphabet also raised its SpaceX holding to about 555 million shares, up from 551.2 million.
Those results showed why Qualcomm is pushing beyond phones. For the quarter ended September 27, GAAP revenue fell 8% year over year to $10.3 billion. Handset chip sales dropped 26% to $5.14 billion, and adjusted earnings per share fell 27.7% to $2.17. Qualcomm missed Wall Street expectations for smartphone chip sales, but it forecast better-than-expected revenue for its young data-center segment. The company also warned that rising wafer and memory costs are squeezing margins.
Qualcomm's data-center pitch is custom server processors that it sells to cloud providers as a cheaper alternative to Nvidia hardware. The company is targeting $15 billion in annual data-center chip revenue by 2029, part of a broader goal of $40 billion in non-handset sales by that year.
The customer list is growing. In September, Amazon signed a deal to buy up to $60 billion of Qualcomm AI data-center chips, with warrants to buy Qualcomm stock tied to those purchases. Microsoft and Meta have also placed orders for Qualcomm server chips, and Meta plans to deploy Qualcomm's Dragonfly C1000 processors in 2028.
Alphabet and Qualcomm already work together in several places. Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips power nearly all high-end Android phones and Google's new premium Googlebook laptops, and the two companies formed an automotive AI chip venture in 2024. In the data center, though, the relationship is less tidy: Google designs its own Tensor Processing Units, which means Alphabet and Qualcomm could end up competing for the same cloud customers.
The filing itself does not say whether Alphabet's investment is connected to Qualcomm's AI infrastructure plans.
Qualcomm is also restructuring. The company plans to cut jobs globally, with notifications beginning in November, though it has not disclosed how many roles are affected. On Wednesday, Qualcomm signed a multi-year deal to supply Dragonwing cellular equipment for tens of thousands of US base stations on SpaceX's Starlink Mobile 5G network starting in 2027.
Wall Street remains split on the stock. TD Cowen analyst Joshua Buchalter and Rosenblatt Securities analyst Kevin Cassidy both kept Buy ratings on the stock, with price targets of $200 and $235. The broader analyst consensus on Qualcomm is Hold, with an average 12-month price target of $192.06.
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