Qualcomm Set $15 Billion Data Center Revenue Goal

The company announced Meta as its first customer for the upcoming Dragonfly C1000 CPU as part of a major pivot.

Updated on Oct. 6, 2026 in Data Centers

Isometric editorial illustration of a modular server processor board, representing high-performance computing infrastructure development. — Qualcomm announced a $15 billion annual revenue goal for its data center business by 2029, bolstered by a new CPU partnership with Meta. AI Illustration. Upload story photo >

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Qualcomm has announced a target of $15 billion in annual revenue from its data center business by fiscal 2029. This growth strategy includes a partnership with Meta, which has been named the first customer for Qualcomm's Dragonfly C1000 central processing unit.

Why it matters

Qualcomm is signaling a major shift away from its historical reliance on mobile handsets, aiming to diversify into a $1.7 trillion addressable market. The strategy hinges on capturing specialized computing demand in data centers, a move backed by ongoing collaborations with Meta and Amazon.

Qualcomm aims for $15 billion in data center revenue by fiscal 2029, a core component of its $40 billion target for non-handset sectors. By that year, the company expects handset sales to account for only one-third of its total QCT semiconductor revenue.

The players

Qualcomm

A semiconductor and telecommunications equipment company known for its Snapdragon mobile processors and modem technology.

The details

The Dragonfly C1000 CPU is developed as part of a multigeneration effort to create processors optimized for server workloads. Beyond CPUs, Qualcomm maintains a separate partnership with Amazon to develop custom artificial intelligence data center chips and optical connectivity—a method for transmitting data between devices using light pulses instead of electrical currents to increase speed and reduce power usage. These efforts represent an architecture strategy designed to transition the company into the broader cloud infrastructure market.

June 2026: Qualcomm held an Investor Day to outline its fiscal goals.
Second half of 2028: Production of the Dragonfly C1000 is expected to begin.
Fiscal 2029: The target year for reaching $15 billion in data center revenue.
2030: The horizon for the company's $1.7 trillion addressable market estimate.

The Tech Race

This development represents a significant expansion into server-side silicon, where Qualcomm aims to challenge established providers of data center CPUs. The move directly competes with incumbent architectures by leveraging custom chip partnerships to secure cloud-scale deployments.

The Dragonfly C1000 and associated AI chips are currently in development, with no immediate impact on existing consumer-facing hardware. Industry participants should track the projected production launch in the second half of 2028 to see how these chips shift cloud infrastructure capacity.

The takeaway

Qualcomm is betting its future on a massive pivot from mobile to data center infrastructure, aiming to make handsets only a minority share of its business by 2029. Investors and industry analysts should monitor the start of Dragonfly C1000 production in late 2028 for early performance indicators.