Qualcomm said on Sept. 8 that it is partnering with Amazon on multigenerational products, including custom chips for large-scale AI data centers. In a same-day 8-K filing, the company also disclosed that it issued 25 million warrants to an Amazon investment affiliate at an exercise price of $161.26 a share, or about $4.03 billion based on that strike price.
Warrants vest in tranches based on Amazon purchasing commitments
The warrant agreement was signed on Sept. 3 and issued to Amazon.com NV Investment Holdings LLC. It carries a 10-year term through Sept. 3, 2036, allows cashless exercise, and gives the holder no voting rights before exercise.
The key condition is vesting. According to the filing, the warrants vest in tranches tied to Amazon entering commercial agreements, placing binding purchase orders, and making actual purchases of Qualcomm server chip products and services. The filing says the vesting ceiling corresponds to $6 billion in payments. Of the total, 3.75 million shares vested when the warrant was issued based on an initial purchase commitment.
Partnership covers custom silicon, 1.6T optical interconnects, and AWS infrastructure
In its official release, Qualcomm said the collaboration centers on three areas. The first is custom chips for AI inference in large-scale data centers. The second is high-performance optical interconnect technology extending to 1.6T and next-generation systems. The third is Qualcomm’s use of AWS AI infrastructure, including Amazon Bedrock, to run electronic design automation workloads and shorten chip design cycles.
Qualcomm said the technical foundation includes its SerDes and optical digital signal processing technologies.
Qualcomm President and Chief Executive Officer Cristiano Amon said data center infrastructure needs advances in both compute and connectivity as AI demand accelerates, so it can deliver stronger performance more efficiently. AWS Vice President Prasad Kalyanaraman said the companies’ work on custom chips and advanced connectivity can give customers infrastructure with better performance, higher efficiency, and lower cost.
Corning and Verizon announce multiyear fiber supply agreement
On the same day, Corning and Verizon announced a separate multiyear supply agreement. Corning will provide more than 80 million miles of high-density fiber and connectivity solutions from 2027 to 2032. The companies did not disclose the contract value and said only that it is in the multibillion-dollar range.
The agreement has two stated uses. One is to accelerate Verizon’s broadband expansion for households and businesses, with a target of reaching 40 million to 50 million broadband passings. The other is to build a nationwide long-haul backbone network to support generative AI computing demand. Corning and Verizon said they have worked together for 30 years.