Alphabet Discloses $547.9 Million Stake in Qualcomm
Alphabet held nearly 3 million Qualcomm shares worth $547.9 million at the end of September, a filing shows, as Qualcomm pushes into AI data centers.
Alphabet, Google's parent, held nearly 3 million shares in chipmaker Qualcomm at the end of September, a stake worth $547.9 million, according to a regulatory filing reported by Reuters on Friday. The filing lists Alphabet's holdings in other companies and does not say when the shares were bought or why; neither company commented.
Qualcomm shares rose more than 3% in premarket trading after the disclosure. The chipmaker's stock had tumbled more than 9% on Thursday following disappointing September-quarter results and a broader selloff tied to the US midterm elections.
The stake comes as Qualcomm ramps up its data-center business to become a supplier to the AI infrastructure boom. The company expects data-center chip revenue to reach $15 billion by 2029 and recently struck a deal with Amazon allowing the retailer to buy up to $60 billion of its AI data-center chips and related products, with warrants to purchase Qualcomm stock. Microsoft and Meta have also backed Qualcomm's push with orders for its data-center processors.
Qualcomm unveiled its first data-center chips, the AI200 and AI250, in October last year and has since signed a custom AI chip deal with ByteDance, owner of TikTok. The company is courting cloud providers with custom AI processors as customers seek alternatives to Nvidia's costly chips.
Alphabet and Qualcomm are longtime partners. Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips power most Android smartphones, and the two collaborated on Google's new premium Googlebook laptop line running on Qualcomm processors. They also agreed in 2024 to build chips and software for AI adoption in the automotive industry. Alphabet designs its own AI chips, called TPUs, for its data centers — the same market Qualcomm is now entering.
The same filing shows Alphabet increased its position in SpaceX to about 555 million shares from 551.2 million. Google first invested in SpaceX in 2015, when it joined Fidelity in a $1 billion funding round.
The disclosure covers holdings as of September 30, the end of the third quarter. Large US investors must report such stakes every quarter, so the next update will come early next year.
In delayed trading, Alphabet (GOOGL) shares were up about 1.9% and Qualcomm (QCOM) shares were up about 3.2%.