Qualcomm announces China-specific Dragonfly data center chip lineup with nerfed AI accelerators complying with US export thresholds.

Qualcomm has announced plans to bring all four of its Dragonfly data center product lines to China, including custom AI accelerators engineered to stay below U.S. export thresholds, according to CEO Cristiano Amon, speaking on the sidelines of the company's investor day in New York. China supplied 46% of Qualcomm's revenue in 2025, almost all from smartphone silicon, and the data center plan could revive the same export-compliant strategy that cut Nvidia's China accelerator sales to nearly zero.

The Dragonfly lineup spans AI accelerators, data center CPUs, custom silicon, and connectivity chips. Amon stated that versions of every product line will ship into China within applicable export guidelines. "We have versions of all of our products that comply with those guidelines," he told Nikkei Asia, noting that Qualcomm is "engaged in conversations," presumably with Chinese customers. The first accelerator, the AI250, is scheduled for release next year and uses Qualcomm's HBC near-memory design instead of the HBM stacks that Nvidia and AMD rely on—a packaging approach that could prove advantageous in a market where HBM supply will remain constrained.

Qualcomm projects its data center unit will generate $300 million in revenue this fiscal year, rising to $5 billion in fiscal year 2027, figures the company views as the early phase of a total addressable market it expects will exceed $1 trillion by 2029. The China push leverages Qualcomm's existing relationships with Chinese phone makers and automakers, the same customer base behind its AI200 and AI250 inference accelerators announced last October.

However, China's market presents complications. The country's regulator opened an antitrust investigation into Qualcomm's Autotalks acquisition in October and has pressured domestic data center operators to source at least 50% of chips domestically while steering major companies like Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent toward Huawei and Cambricon products.

The export-compliant model Qualcomm seeks to replicate has already proven ineffective. Nvidia's H20, built specifically for China, generated only about $50 million by late last year, and CEO Jensen Huang stated Nvidia now has "zero" China market share. Qualcomm is entering this market with hardware that won't reach customers until at least fiscal year 2027, by which point Huawei's Ascend line and Cambricon's accelerators are scheduled to scale production substantially beyond current volumes.

Qualcomm has at least one confirmed buyer outside China: Saudi Arabia's Humain is already taking delivery of AI100 systems and has committed to 200MW of Qualcomm racks. Inside China, the company must convince customers that Beijing is redirecting away from foreign semiconductors.