New York, Jan 6, 2026, 19:42 EST — After-hours
- Qualcomm shares rose about 3.5% in extended trade as CES announcements put its auto and PC push back in focus.
- Qualcomm and Google detailed a deeper automotive tie-up aimed at speeding “software-defined vehicles” and in-car AI agents.
- Investors are watching for more CES design-win headlines and Qualcomm’s Feb. 4 earnings call for guidance.
Qualcomm Incorporated shares rose 3.5% to $182.45 in after-hours trading on Tuesday, after swinging between $176.50 and $184.38 during the session as investors weighed a string of CES updates tied to cars and PCs.
The moves land as CES 2026 opens in Las Vegas and suppliers try to convince investors they can turn artificial intelligence into revenue beyond smartphones. The trade show runs from Jan. 6 to 9 and is expected to feature autonomous-driving and AI-heavy pitches across the industry.
Qualcomm Technologies, a unit of Qualcomm, and Google said they expanded their decade-long automotive collaboration to help automakers build “software-defined vehicles” — cars that add and change features through software — and to bring “agentic AI,” software that can act on a driver’s behalf, into the cabin. Patrick Brady, a vice president of engineering at Google, said the companies were “thrilled to deepen” the partnership, while Qualcomm executive Nakul Duggal said it “marks a new chapter” in their work. 1
The expanded plan includes aligning Snapdragon Cockpit platforms with Android Automotive OS roadmaps starting with Android 17, and offering a Snapdragon virtual system-on-chip on Google Cloud’s Arm-based Axion instances to speed software development and testing. Qualcomm also outlined “Project Treble” for Android Automotive OS lifecycle management, aimed at making over-the-air updates — remote software updates — more predictable across multiple chip generations.
On the PC side, Qualcomm unveiled Snapdragon X2 Plus chips for Windows laptops, leaning on a built-in neural processing unit — a dedicated AI engine — that the company said can deliver up to 80 trillion operations per second, a common yardstick for AI acceleration. Kedar Kondap, a senior vice president at Qualcomm Technologies, said users want “power, efficiency and intelligence” without the trade-offs that can come with thin-and-light designs. 2
Qualcomm spokesperson Cassandra Garcia-Bacha told The Verge that laptops using the Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Plus platforms should arrive around the end of the first quarter. Qualcomm executives also said they were aiming for similar price tiers to the prior generation as PC makers roll out CES lineups.
Qualcomm also used CES to broaden its edge-computing pitch, launching Dragonwing Q-series processors for Internet-of-Things devices meant to run AI on the device and pushing further into robotics. Mobile World Live reported the company was also showcasing a full-stack robotics architecture and targeting drones, smart cameras and industrial vision systems.
In autos, Qualcomm and supplier ZF also announced a driver-assistance tie-up that pairs ZF’s ProAI supercomputer with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Ride chips, targeting systems that can scale up to Level 3 automated driving. “We’re enabling automakers to deliver intelligent, safer, and more cost-effective driver assistance systems,” Qualcomm’s Anshuman Saxena said.
But CES announcements do not always translate quickly into sales. Automotive and PC design cycles can stretch for quarters, and Qualcomm faces entrenched rivals in PCs such as Intel and AMD, while automotive compute remains crowded as suppliers compete for long-lived platforms.
Investors get the next hard catalyst on Feb. 4, when Qualcomm is scheduled to hold its fiscal first-quarter earnings conference call, with traders focused on guidance and how fast automotive and PC wins are converting into shipments.
