The AI Opportunity Qualcomm Investors May Be Underestimating

Vandita Jadeja

Mon, August 24, 2026 at 4:30 PM GMT+3 4 min read

Quick Read

Wall Street misprices QCOM as a handset stock while automotive revenue surged 61% and Cristiano Amon targets $40B in non-handset revenue by 2029.
AVGO and MRVL both carry AI premiums, yet QCOM's forward P/E of 16 and EV/EBITDA of 13 make it the cheaper data center bet.
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Wall Street prices Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) like a handset company facing a slow Apple exit. Our model sees a diversified semiconductor platform with a credible path into the data center, priced at a discount to its earnings power.

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The 24/7 Wall St. price target for Qualcomm is $226.05 over the next 12 months, implying 41.14% upside from the current $160.61 quote. Our recommendation is buy, with a high confidence level of 90%.

24/7 Wall St. Price Target Summary

A Rough Stretch With a Sharper Story Underneath

QCOM shares are down 2.46% over the past week, 7.35% over the past month, and 5.06% year to date, well off the $258.96 52-week high.

Fiscal Q3 revenue of $9.947 billion beat consensus by roughly 2.84%, but non-GAAP EPS of $2.21 narrowly missed expectations, ending a six-quarter beat streak. Handset revenue fell 20% year over year, while automotive rose 61% to $1.588 billion. That mix shift is the story the market is under-pricing.

QCOM Price Target — 24/7 Wall St.

Why Bulls See a Breakout Ahead

The bull thesis centers on non-handset revenue. CEO Cristiano Amon said Qualcomm is targeting "total non-handset revenues growing to $40 billion by fiscal 2029, nearly double the target we shared in November 2024", with growth accelerating from 24% in fiscal 2026 to greater than 60% in fiscal 2027.

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Data center alone is projected to scale from $5 billion in fiscal 2027 to $15 billion in fiscal 2029, backed by two hyperscaler custom silicon wins already in wafer production with revenue starting the December quarter (the same data-center buildout we mapped across seven non-chipmaker suppliers in a free AI infrastructure report).

HBC Gen 1 has taped out, with a first solution launch targeted for mid-2027. Our bull case forecast points to $243.69, a 52.16% total return.

QCOM Price Scenario — 24/7 Wall St.

What Could Go Wrong

Apple product revenue is expected to fall roughly 50% from September to December quarter, with fiscal 2027 share landing materially below the prior 20% assumption. Operating income fell 41.13% year over year in Q3 amid broad-based increases in wafer, packaging, and memory costs.

Management expects planned double-digit price increases to restore gross margin to the historical 48% to 50% range. The margin decline reflects heavy investment in the data center roadmap that our model rewards. Our bear case still lands at $191.05, a 19.29% gain from here.

How Qualcomm Compares to Broadcom and Marvell

Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO) is the incumbent in hyperscaler custom silicon and sets the valuation ceiling. AVGO trades at a rich multiple relative to QCOM's forward P/E of 16, framing how much re-rating room Qualcomm has if its two hyperscaler wins scale as guided.

Marvell Technology (NASDAQ: MRVL) competes head-on for custom ASIC and networking sockets at the same hyperscalers Qualcomm just landed. Marvell already carries an AI premium; Qualcomm trades near 18x trailing earnings with an EV/EBITDA of 13. On the same data center opportunity, Qualcomm looks meaningfully cheaper, making our 24/7 Wall St. price target of $226.05 reasonable rather than aggressive.

QCOM Analyst Ratings — 24/7 Wall St.

Qualcomm Price Prediction 2026-2030

Buy, with high confidence. The 24/7 Wall St. price target of $226.05 rests on a forward multiple that is not demanding, a genuine data center inflection in fiscal 2027, and record automotive momentum.

The setup strengthens if fiscal Q4 confirms pricing-driven margin recovery and the December-quarter custom silicon ramp lands on schedule. The thesis weakens if handset weakness deepens beyond the guided low-teens fiscal-year decline or if HBC customer engagements slip past mid-2027.

These projections assume Qualcomm executes on the $40 billion non-handset revenue target. Significant upside or downside could come from the pace of hyperscaler custom silicon ramps and the trajectory of memory and wafer input costs.