Qualcomm’s FY2027 Q1 guidance includes first custom chip shipments to two hyperscalers

CFO Akash Palkhiwala says data center revenue starts flowing next quarter, with Amazon Web Services and an unnamed cloud giant leading the way Qualcomm has spent years being described as a smartphone chip company. Its latest guidance suggests it would like that description retired. CFO Akash Palkhiwala said the company’s first-quarter guidance for fiscal 2027 includes initial shipments of custom chips to two hyperscale cloud customers. That makes the next quarter the official starting line for Qualcomm’s data center revenue. The disclosure arrived with Qualcomm’s fiscal Q4 2026 earnings release on November 4, 2026. It also landed in a quarter when the company’s core phone business had a rough showing. What Qualcomm is guiding to The headline item is simple. Custom silicon built for two of the world’s largest cloud operators is expected to begin shipping in Q1 of FY2027. One of the two customers is known. Amazon Web Services signed an agreement with Qualcomm in September 2026 focused on AI inference workloads, and that deal is set to start contributing revenue in Q1 FY2027. Inference is the part of AI that happens after a model is trained. It is the work of actually answering querie...