Qualcomm said on September 8 that Amazon can buy up to $60 billion of its data-center chips and related products over 10 years, announced at a Goldman Sachs investor conference in San Francisco, per CNBC. The work covers several generations of custom inference ASICs for AWS and co-developed optics running at up to 1.6 terabits per second. Qualcomm will also move chip-design workloads onto AWS.
The 8-K shows a warrant for 25 million Qualcomm shares at $161.26, about $4 billion at the strike, expiring September 3, 2036, per The Next Web. It vests in tranches as Amazon signs commercial agreements, places binding orders, and pays for product. The first 3.75 million shares, 15% of the total, vested on the initial commitment. Amazon pays $161.26 to exercise, so its gain is the spread above that price. Each $10 Qualcomm trades over the strike adds $250 million to Amazon's position.
Qualcomm pays in stock. Nvidia pays in cash, putting about $2 billion into Nscale's pending round and backing up to $105 billion of financing for OpenAI's Ohio build. AMD gave OpenAI warrants tied to deployment milestones last October. Three chipmakers, three versions of the same purchase: a supplier funding its customer's commitment.
Bottom Line
A $60 billion ceiling that vests on purchases is contingent demand. Model Qualcomm's data-center revenue from binding orders as they are disclosed, and treat $60 billion as the upper bound.