NEW YORK, June 23, 2026, 17:48 (EDT)
Qualcomm shares dropped 8.01% to end at $204.13 on Tuesday, erasing about $19 billion in market value. The selloff is almost five times the $4 billion reported price tag for AI startup Modular, a deal still not finalized.
The fall was close to the 7.9% drop in the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, showing most of the selling hit the sector. Qualcomm lagged Nvidia, which shed 4.1%, and Broadcom, down 3.1%. “The AI trade had become highly concentrated and flow-driven,” Baird strategist Ross Mayfield said. That left it open to sentiment swings. Reuters
Qualcomm is in late-stage talks to acquire Modular, Bloomberg reported late Monday. The number on the table is 150% higher than the $1.6 billion valuation Modular got nine months back. The deal isn’t locked in and could fall apart. Qualcomm has also circled Tenstorrent, a chip startup, looking at a possible $8 billion to $10 billion price tag.
The two reported prices add up to $12 billion to $14 billion, or 1.2 to 1.4 times Qualcomm’s $9.8 billion in cash and marketable securities at March 29. Qualcomm had $15.27 billion in debt. It made $7.4 billion in operating cash flow in the first half. There’s no word yet on structure, but how Qualcomm will finance these deals, and what happens to buybacks, is now a bigger question. The company spent $5.4 billion on repurchases in that stretch.
Qualcomm shares slid ahead of the company’s investor day in New York. Management is set to lay out its data-center strategy at 2:15 p.m. EDT Wednesday. CEO Cristiano Amon said a custom-chip deal with a major hyperscaler is “on track for initial shipments later this calendar year.” investor.qualcomm.com
Handsets brought in $6.02 billion for Qualcomm in the latest quarter, making up close to two-thirds of chip revenue. Handset sales dropped 13%. Automotive revenue jumped 38%. Qualcomm didn’t break out data-center sales as a separate line.
Bank of America’s Vivek Arya kept his Underperform rating on Tuesday, even as he bumped up his target to $195 from $165. That new target stays about 4.5% under Tuesday’s close. Arya sees Qualcomm facing a $2 billion to $5 billion short-term shot in the market, but called the company a “late entrant in a fast-growing but hyper-competitive AI market full of large incumbents.” Benzinga
UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri sees a bigger upside for Qualcomm, saying data centers and agent-based computing “could ultimately add ~$20 billion to Qualcomm’s existing financial model.” Qualcomm shares are still up roughly 19% this year even after Tuesday’s drop. Barron’s
But this setup can go either way. With a named customer, clear sales goals and real margins, Tuesday’s drop might just be the chip slump. But loose forecasts, or new deals paid for with a lot of debt while phone sales remain soft, could pull more of the AI premium out of the shares.
The question for Qualcomm on Wednesday is whether it will give dates and revenue figures for its data-center business, and say how any deals would hit cash returns to shareholders.
