Qualcomm said on 4 November that it expects “Data Center revenues in Q1FY27 to be $650M+, increase each quarter throughout the year, and exit FY27 with a $7B annualized run-rate”, in the earnings presentation for its fiscal fourth quarter. A $7 billion annualized rate is $1.75 billion a quarter, about 2.7 times the $650 million guided for the first quarter, by our arithmetic. These are company targets, not results.
The starting point is small. The 10-K filed the same day shows that Qualcomm’s nonreportable segments, which it says include its Data Center, QGOV and Modular businesses, had $476 million of revenue in fiscal 2026 and a $607 million loss before taxes. One guided quarter of Data Center revenue, $650 million, is about 1.37 times that full-year figure, by our arithmetic.
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Quarterly revenue: Q4 fiscal 2026 actuals by QCT stream vs Qualcomm’s Data Center targets ($650M+ in Q1 FY27; $7B annualized exit run-rate, $1.75B a quarter by our arithmetic). Source: Qualcomm Q4 FY26 release (8-K Ex.99.1) and earnings presentation, 4 November 2026.
The key insight: Qualcomm guides Data Center revenue of $650 million or more in the first quarter of fiscal 2027 and a $7 billion annualized run-rate at the end of the year, which is $1.75 billion a quarter and about 2.7 times the first-quarter guide by our arithmetic; one guided quarter is about 1.37 times the $476 million that its three nonreportable businesses booked in all of fiscal 2026.
In the results release, chief executive Cristiano Amon said: “Fiscal 2027 marks the start of our non-handset revenue inflection, including the ramp of our Data Center business. Non-handset revenues are projected to grow by more than 60% year-over-year, and we are reiterating our fiscal 2027 Data Center revenue target of $5B.”
If the first quarter lands at $650 million, the other three quarters would need about $4.35 billion between them to reach $5 billion, or about $1.45 billion a quarter on average, by our arithmetic. The presentation repeats the $15B+ target for fiscal 2029 set at its June 2026 Investor Day, three times the fiscal 2027 figure.
The presentation lists multi-generation design wins to date: connectivity with two customers, including Amazon; custom silicon and AI accelerators with three customers, including Amazon; and a CPU win with Meta. It says Qualcomm is “advancing discussions with new large potential customers, focused on GW-scale opportunities” for its High Bandwidth Compute and CPU platforms.
Amazon’s deal comes with a warrant. The 10-K says Qualcomm issued an Amazon affiliate a warrant for up to 25 million shares at $161.26. The shares vest against purchase milestones “up to a maximum amount of $60 billion in payments”, and the 10-K says the warrant shares “are recorded as a reduction to revenues as the related revenues are recognized during the vesting term”. It put the warrant’s fair value at $1.8 billion, with about 4 million shares vested at issuance.
From fiscal 2027, Data Center is reported inside the QCT chip segment. The presentation says the first-quarter QCT margin guide of 20% to 22% includes a 3 percentage point impact from that change, which it says “reflects investment in the data center roadmap for AI accelerator and CPU platforms ahead of the revenue ramp”.
Qualcomm’s Data Center guidance: $650 million or more in the first quarter of fiscal 2027 and a $7 billion annualized run-rate at the end of fiscal 2027, per its Q4 FY26 earnings presentation, 4 November 2026. The $1.75 billion a quarter and about 2.7 times are our arithmetic; these are company targets, not results.
What Was Posted on X
$QCOM expects data center revenue of more than $650 million in Q1, rising every quarter to exit fiscal 2027 at a $7 billion annualized run-rate.
Qualcomm is also raising prices across its products to reflect higher semiconductor input costs.
Wall St Engine posted at 21:02 UTC on 4 November that Qualcomm expects data center revenue of more than $650 million in Q1, rising every quarter to a $7 billion annualized run-rate at the end of fiscal 2027, and that it is raising prices across its products. The piece checks both points against Qualcomm’s own presentation and release.
Price Increases to Cover Input Costs
The second message is pricing. The presentation says: “We are implementing price increases across our products to reflect higher semiconductor input costs.” The release describes “a broad-based increase in input costs across wafer fabrication, assembly, test, advanced packaging, memory and other materials”, and says Qualcomm anticipates “the full benefit of these actions to be reflected in QCT gross margins in the second half of fiscal 2027”.
The 10-K says the cost increases from key suppliers “have and will continue to negatively impact our margins”, and ties the industry squeeze “in part to increasing demand for leading-edge technologies, AI and data center applications”. The presentation adds that custom silicon revenues “are dilutive to gross margins” but remain accretive to QCT EBT margins, according to the company.
Memory also shows up in handset demand. The 10-K attributes lower fiscal 2026 handset revenue to lower chipset shipments to certain major OEMs, “primarily driven by customers adjusting build plans to reduce their inventory levels as a result of the negative effects of recent memory supply constraints and related price increases”. It says Qualcomm expects those constraints “to adversely affect demand from several handset OEMs”.
The Quarter in Numbers
Fourth-quarter GAAP revenue fell 8% to $10,322 million, and non-GAAP revenue fell 7% to $10,442 million. Non-GAAP EPS was $2.17, against $3.00 a year earlier; GAAP EPS was $1.17. QCT revenue fell 8% to $9,015 million and QTL licensing revenue fell 7% to $1,304 million.
Inside QCT, handsets fell 26% to $5,137 million, automotive rose 89% to $1,990 million, its first $2 billion quarter, and IoT rose 4% to $1,888 million. Handsets were about 57% of QCT revenue, against about 71% a year earlier, by our arithmetic. A $1.75 billion Data Center quarter would be about 93% of this quarter’s IoT revenue, by our arithmetic.
For the first quarter of fiscal 2027, Qualcomm guides revenue of $10.4 billion to $11.2 billion, QCT revenue of $9.0 billion to $9.6 billion including Data Center, and non-GAAP EPS of $2.15 to $2.35. The $650 million Data Center guide is about 7% of the QCT midpoint, by our arithmetic. The release also notes renewed long-term licence agreements with Apple, Huawei and Transsion.
What the Risk Factors Say
Qualcomm’s fiscal 2026 10-K adds a risk factor heading that we could not find in its fiscal 2025 10-K: “Our increasing focus on artificial intelligence (AI), including on-device AI, agentic AI and AI infrastructure, may not result in the anticipated benefits and could expose us to additional competitive, regulatory, intellectual property and operational risks.” It says AI investments “are subject to a high degree of uncertainty”.
The diversification heading also changed. It now names “automotive, the internet of things (IoT) and data center”; the fiscal 2025 heading spoke more generally of “new and expanded product areas, and industries and applications beyond mobile handsets”.
As we read the filings, the ramp starts from a small base: the nonreportable segments that held Data Center in fiscal 2026 lost $607 million before taxes on $476 million of revenue, according to the 10-K.
As we read the presentation, the same document that sets the data centre target also announces price increases across Qualcomm’s products, and the 10-K ties the industry input-cost squeeze in part to AI and data center demand.
Qualcomm Q4 FY26 earnings presentation, 4 November 2026
“We are implementing price increases across our products to reflect higher semiconductor input costs.”
Three Implications
FOR THE $5 BILLION TARGET If the first quarter lands at $650 million, the other three quarters need about $4.35 billion between them, about $1.45 billion a quarter on average, by our arithmetic.
FOR AMAZON’S WARRANT The 10-K says the warrant shares are recorded as a reduction to revenues as the related revenues are recognized, with vesting tied to up to $60 billion in payments.
FOR HANDSETS Handsets were about 57% of QCT revenue in the fourth quarter, against about 71% a year earlier, by our arithmetic.
The framework says: “Memory is becoming the new compute.”
As we read it, Qualcomm’s filings show both sides of that line on one day: memory supply constraints and price increases cut handset demand, according to the 10-K, while its Data Center guide rests on platforms such as High Bandwidth Compute, which the 10-K describes as a near-memory architecture. The framework does not discuss Qualcomm.
The $650 million, $5 billion and $7 billion figures are targets in the presentation and release, not results. The 10-K does not break out Data Center revenue on its own for fiscal 2026; the $476 million covers three nonreportable businesses. The documents we read do not give the size of the price increases or the warrant charge against fiscal 2027 revenue. We did not read the conference call, which was scheduled for 1:45 p.m. Pacific Time.
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Qualcomm guides Data Center revenue of $650 million or more in its first fiscal quarter and says it will exit fiscal 2027 at a $7 billion annualized run-rate, $1.75 billion a quarter, about 2.7 times the first-quarter guide by our arithmetic. One guided quarter is already above the $476 million that its three nonreportable businesses booked in all of fiscal 2026. It is also raising prices across its products to pass on higher input costs, including memory.
A note on sourcing. Figures and quotations are from Qualcomm’s fourth-quarter and fiscal 2026 results release (8-K Exhibit 99.1) and earnings presentation, and its fiscal 2026 Form 10-K, all published on 4 November 2026. Ratios, per-quarter conversions and shares are our arithmetic. Guidance figures are company targets.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
