News Details

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM):

Highlights:

• Combines an AI-native software platform, and the world-class team behind it, with Qualcomm Technologies silicon leadership to accelerate adoption of its edge-to-cloud AI platforms by developers, OEMs, ODMs, cloud service providers and model creators.
• Further enables Qualcomm Technologies to deliver a silicon-agnostic compute layer across devices, edge and data centers, improving performance-per-watt, increasing hardware flexibility, and expanding an open developer ecosystem so customers can deploy AI more efficiently across heterogeneous platforms globally.
• Expands data center opportunity and enables optimal day-zero performance on new Qualcomm Technologies AI hardware, positioning the company to drive the global expansion of data center and edge AI compute.

Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM), a connected computing leader at the center of the AI era, today announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Modular Inc, strengthening Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.’s software foundation for generative and agentic AI across data center and edge environments.

As AI scales, efficiency, not capability, becomes a constraint. Performance-per-watt drives the cost of inference, and cost determines what scales. Meeting this demand requires more than hardware. Developers need software that connects system-level optimization with heterogeneous, disaggregated compute, turning silicon performance into reliable and efficient AI services across accelerators, environments, and use cases.

Modular provides an open, AI-native software stack that enables AI to run efficiently across hardware architectures. Built by engineers who helped create much of today’s AI infrastructure, Modular’s unified platform runs models with industry-leading performance across CPU, GPU, NPU, and custom ASIC architectures without re-writes for each accelerator. For developers and enterprises, that means building once, deploying across any environment with lower total cost of ownership. Modular is supported by an open, industry-friendly, vendor-neutral developer community committed to improving the portability and efficiency of AI infrastructure.

The acquisition is expected to strengthen Qualcomm Technologies' ability to deliver a more optimized AI compute layer across a broad range of platforms and use cases. It deepens the software foundation for Qualcomm Technologies' data center strategy, supporting more efficient inference, orchestration, and deployment in distributed AI systems, while strengthening relationships with model creators, developers, hyperscalers, and enterprises.

By combining Qualcomm Technologies silicon leadership with Modular’s software expertise, Qualcomm Technologies will be well positioned to help customers move AI into production from device to cloud, with systems that are faster, more efficient, and easier to scale.

“This acquisition marks a pivotal moment not just for Qualcomm, but for the AI industry,” said Cristiano Amon, President and CEO, Qualcomm Incorporated. “As agentic AI scales across data centers and edge environments, the industry is moving toward disaggregated, multi-vendor architectures that demand a more open and modern software foundation. We believe the future belongs to developer-friendly, horizontal platforms that can run across diverse compute environments and give customers real choice in how and where they deploy AI. With Modular, we’re accelerating that shift, combining our scale and energy-efficient data center technologies with an open ecosystem approach to help drive the next chapter of AI.”

“Modular was founded on the belief that AI needs a more open and efficient software foundation that can span diverse hardware and deployment environments,” said Chris Lattner, Co-founder and CEO, Modular. “Joining Qualcomm gives us the scale and platform reach to accelerate that mission. Together, we can make AI development more accessible and performant for developers, strengthen portability across hardware, and help grow an open ecosystem that broadens participation and speeds innovation. We are excited to continue advancing our software platform as part of Qualcomm’s broader strategy from edge to cloud.”

The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2026, subject to customary closing conditions and applicable regulatory approvals.

About Qualcomm

Qualcomm is a global computing leader at the center of the AI era, enabling intelligence to scale from the most personal devices to large‑scale infrastructure. Building on more than four decades of innovation, we develop platforms and solutions that bring together advanced AI, high‑performance, low power computing and industry‑leading connectivity—powering products and services used around the world. At Qualcomm, we are engineering human progress.

Qualcomm Incorporated includes our licensing business, QTL, and the vast majority of our patent portfolio. Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, operates, along with its subsidiaries, substantially all of our engineering and research and development functions and substantially all of our products and services businesses, including our QCT semiconductor business. Snapdragon and Qualcomm branded products are products of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. Qualcomm patents are licensed by Qualcomm Incorporated. Qualcomm, Snapdragon, Qualcomm Dragonwing and Qualcomm Dragonfly are trademarks or registered trademarks of Qualcomm Incorporated.

About Modular

Modular is an AI software infrastructure company building a unified compute platform that makes AI development and deployment more open, efficient, and accessible. Its software tools and modular technologies let developers write once and run anywhere, simplifying how they build, optimize, and run AI across diverse hardware and environments, from data center to edge. That same modularity gives customers independence from any single hardware vendor, helping them adopt AI faster, reduce integration overhead, and scale as their needs evolve, making the platform increasingly relevant in a fast-growing market.