SAN DIEGO, May 26, 2026, 09:01 PDT
- Rep. Sara Jacobs reported two Qualcomm stock sales in the $500,001 to $1 million range apiece.
- Qualcomm’s shares climbed after a report of a ByteDance AI-chip deal, putting a new spotlight on the filing.
- The House filing lists value ranges but does not include share totals, actual prices, or why the sales happened.
Rep. Sara Jacobs, Democrat of San Diego, sold up to $2 million in Qualcomm stock from a family trust, according to a House disclosure. Jacobs’s grandfather helped start Qualcomm, drawing attention to the move.
Qualcomm is drawing attention for more than its smartphone chips. Reuters said Tuesday that Qualcomm had secured an agreement, according to Bloomberg News, to provide AI data center chips to ByteDance, parent of TikTok. The news pushed Qualcomm stock up almost 5%.
Congressional trading is still getting attention in Washington, and this trade disclosure lands amid the discussions. The STOCK Act says covered federal officials have to report stock trades over $1,000 within 30 days of notice and not more than 45 days after the trade.
Jacobs disclosed two partial Qualcomm stock sales in a Periodic Transaction Report, with one trade on May 6 and another on May 7. Each transaction was for $500,001 to $1 million. Both stock sales were listed under “Sara J Jacobs 1999 Trust > Merrill Lynch – SJ QCOM,” according to the filing.
The filing is digitally signed May 20. There’s no detail on the number of shares, price, or who gave instructions for the trades. The reason for the sales isn’t disclosed. But it does show capital gains over $200 on both trades.
The family connection is drawing some focus to the disclosure. UC San Diego’s page on Irwin Jacobs refers to him as Qualcomm’s co-founder and chairman. Vox said in 2020 that he was Sara Jacobs’ grandfather and had supported her run for Congress.
Qualcomm was last seen around $251, up roughly 5% in U.S. morning trading. The stock earlier hit an intraday high close to $258. Market data showed the chipmaker’s value at about $269 billion.
ByteDance is set to purchase millions of AI ASICs from Qualcomm to power its AI agent software, Reuters reported. The deal would make ByteDance one of the first major customers for Qualcomm’s new chips built for AI.
Qualcomm could move deeper into custom chips, an area where Broadcom and Marvell have made gains and Nvidia still leads in AI processors. CEO Cristiano Amon told Reuters last month that Qualcomm was talking with customers about central processing units, inference accelerators and custom ASICs.
Clean risk on this report: Bloomberg said ByteDance had a deal, but Reuters couldn’t verify it. Reuters also reported that Qualcomm and ByteDance did not respond to comment requests.
Another hurdle is Qualcomm’s smartphone exposure. The company depends a lot on phones, and Apple has pulled some modem-chip projects inside. J.P. Morgan analysts called the smartphone market “hardly out of the woods,” pointing to the risk of memory shortages and steeper memory costs. Reuters
Jacobs is a member of the House Armed Services and House Foreign Affairs committees. Her biography lists her as vice chair of the New Democrat Coalition’s AI Working Group. The disclosure didn’t connect the Qualcomm sales with committee activity, bills, or any news from the company.
