Alphabet quietly reveals $548M Qualcomm stake amid data-centre push
What's the deal? AlphabetDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → disclosed on November 6 that it held nearly three million QualcommDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → shares worth $547.9 million as at the end of September. The Google parent revealed the position in a mandatory 13F filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Qualcomm shares rose more than 3% in pre-market trading.
How much does it mean? Less than the headlines suggest. A 13F shows only which US-listed stocks a large investor held at quarter-end; it names neither the purpose nor the timing of a purchase, nor any later sales. Measured against Qualcomm's market value, the stake is a fraction of 1% — far from a takeover.
What's the context? In the same filing, Alphabet lifted its SpaceX holding to about 555 million shares from 551.2 million. The company is spreading capital across the infrastructure meant to carry its AI services, including a $17 billion data centre in Wyoming announced a day earlier.
Why Qualcomm, why now? Qualcomm earlier this week missed Wall Street expectations for smartphone chip sales on weak demand; its handset chip revenue fell 26% in the latest quarter. The chipmaker is pivoting to data centres, forecasting better-than-expected revenue for that nascent segment and targeting more than $15 billion in annual data-centre sales by 2029, up from roughly $0.3 billion this fiscal year.
What changes for customers? In the short term, nothing. Users of Google CloudDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, AWSDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, or Azure get neither different prices nor different chips from the stake. Over time, it signals that large cloud providers are broadening how they buy hardware.
The signal: Cloud giants like Google and AmazonDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → increasingly design their own AI chips while seeking suppliers that reduce their dependence on NvidiaDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. In September, Qualcomm agreed a multi-year collaboration with Amazon. Until Alphabet or Qualcomm comment, though, the stake remains a data point, not a strategy.
Read more: drweb.de
Image credit: pestoverde
