[Opinion] Forget the Cloud: Qualcomm’s NPU Play May Trigger a Hardware Supercycle

Forget the Cloud: Qualcomm’s NPU Play May Trigger a Hardware Supercycle

Qualcomm has spent five years watching rivals soak up AI excitement while its stock went nowhere, but a shift toward on-device inference could make that stagnation look like the setup for something much bigger.

Big Cloud is poised to corner the market for enterprise hardware

OPINION Whenever I talk to execs from hyperscale clouds, they suggest it is their destiny to eventually host the majority of enterprise workloads. That future is now in sight because the AI boom has shown how they can use their financial muscle to command the hardware supply chain. Nutanix CEO Rajiv Ramaswami made the situation plain in May when he pointed out that the fastest way to access a new server was to rent it from a hyperscaler rather t…