Qualcomm shares surged 12% on Friday, bringing their monthly gain to 75%, as the chipmaker's growing importance in the booming field of physical artificial intelligence draws increasing attention from Wall Street. Qualcomm's stock is currently near record highs.

　　While Qualcomm lags behind giants like Nvidia in the race for AI model and workload chips, the company is leveraging its dominance in the smartphone market to solidify its position as a key player in connected devices—whether glasses, cars, or robots.

　　OpenAI is reportedly also collaborating with Qualcomm to develop an AI chip that could power upcoming devices run by AI agents.

　　"This company will recapture its former glory and lead the connected device revolution," said Ivan Feinseth, an analyst at Tigress Financial Partners, who maintains a "buy" rating on Qualcomm. He added that investors are "gradually realizing this."

　　Regarding the collaboration between Qualcomm and OpenAI, Feinseth expressed confidence in the upcoming device, calling it "a phone with an AI-based operating system that can do everything."

　　Qualcomm is a core component in many devices that perform artificial intelligence at the edge rather than in the cloud. This includes Microsoft's… Google's Surface computers and smart glasses, and Meta. Its arm, based on chips using this technology, offers an energy-efficient alternative to chips manufactured by CPU leaders Intel and AMD.

　　On Thursday, Qualcomm announced an agreement with automaker Stellantis. The company said it will use the chipmaker's Snapdragon processors to "power advanced unified computing capabilities throughout the vehicle, including the cockpit, connectivity, and advanced driver assistance systems."

　　Stellantis owns numerous brands, including Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, and Maserati.

　　"Customers will be able to enjoy a smooth, immersive, and safe autonomous driving experience in cities and on highways, with multiple driving modes to choose from," said Ned Curic, Stellantis' head of product development, at the company's investor day on Thursday.

　　Qualcomm has also reached similar agreements with Bosch and Volkswagen. Automakers such as Hyundai and BMW also use Qualcomm processors. Qualcomm reported a 38% year-over-year increase in automotive revenue to $1.3 billion in its recent earnings report. The company stated that over one million vehicles now use Qualcomm processors in their autonomous driving systems.

　　Friday's stock price increase was also related to investor excitement surrounding a new business area for Qualcomm – data center chips.

　　The AI200 and AI250, released last year, are custom AI accelerators, offering greater programmability compared to Nvidia's graphics processors, which currently dominate AI workloads. These chips are expected to be available later this year in rack-mount systems similar to Nvidia's Vera Rubin and AMD's upcoming Helios systems.

　　Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon stated on the company's April earnings call that the company will begin delivering data center chips to "a large hyperscale data center operator" this year. Investors can expect to hear more at Computex Taipei on June 2nd and Qualcomm Investor Day on June 24th.

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