Qualcomm’s push into artificial intelligence data centers has convinced Goldman Sachs to raise its price target by nearly a quarter.
The bank kept its rating at Neutral anyway, a sign that even a bullish estimate revision isn’t the same as a buy call. Shares have already sailed past Goldman’s new target, leaving the stock ahead of the analysts who just got more optimistic about it.
Goldman lifts its numbers after Qualcomm’s big reveal
Goldman Sachs raised its 12-month price target on Qualcomm to $180 from $145, according to a Goldman Sachs note shared with TheStreet.
The new target applies a 15 times price-to-earnings multiple, up from 12 times, to a normalized earnings estimate of $12 a share, up from $11.
Goldman raised its overall estimates for the company by 10% on average following Qualcomm’s Investor Day.
That event, held in New York on June 24, is where the case for higher numbers was made. Qualcomm nearly doubled its long-term non-handset revenue target for fiscal 2029 to $40 billion, according to Qualcomm’s investor day announcement. Roughly $15 billion of that figure is expected to come from data centers alone.
Cheng Chia Huang / Getty Images
A revenue path with real dollar figures attached
Goldman now models $5 billion in Qualcomm datacenter revenue for fiscal 2027, rising to $8.2 billion by fiscal 2028, according to the note.
Those numbers are early steps toward the company’s 2029 target, and they explain why Goldman felt comfortable raising estimates well ahead of the finish line.
The credibility behind those numbers comes from two customer names. Meta Platforms has committed to deploying Qualcomm’s new Dragonfly C1000 server processor once it enters production in 2028, according to CNBC.
Related: Goldman Sachs sees AMD entering earnings with 1 powerful advantage
Microsoft’s Azure unit has separately signed on for a Qualcomm chip built to ease AI memory bottlenecks, due in mid-2027, according to Quartz.
Both companies are among the so-called Magnificent Seven, whose enterprise spending increasingly sets the pace for the entire chip sector.
More Qualcomm:
- Qualcomm’s massive AI expansion already has 2 Mag 7 giants on board
- Qualcomm eyes $10 billion AI shortcut as smartphone growth slows
- Qualcomm CEO plans to kill app store with AI
The smartphone business keeps shrinking regardless
None of this fixes Qualcomm’s original problem. Goldman trimmed its handset revenue estimates even as it raised automotive and IoT numbers, in line with the company’s own guidance.
Qualcomm has said handsets, which made up 72% of chip revenue in fiscal 2025, are expected to fall to roughly a third of the total by fiscal 2029, according to Quartz.
Goldman expects an in-line fiscal third quarter, with modest upside to guidance driven by better-than-expected margins, according to the note.
Its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings estimate sits 3% above Wall Street consensus, and its fiscal 2027 earnings forecast of $12.40 a share is 15% above the Street.
Qualcomm stock is already pricing in more than Goldman’s target
Qualcomm (QCOM) shares closed at $182.97 on July 8, already above Goldman’s freshly raised $180 target, according to data from TheStreet.
The stock is up more than 16% year to date, and it jumped as much as 15% in after-hours trading the night of the Investor Day, according to CNBC, before settling into a choppier pattern in the weeks since.
That volatility has continued. Shares climbed nearly 6% on July 6 after Benchmark reaffirmed a Street-high $300 target, then dropped days earlier when Elon Muskdenied a report linking SpaceX to a Qualcomm-powered device.
Citi has kept a Neutral rating on the stock while opening a 30-day downside watch, a split verdict that captures how unresolved the datacenter story remains.
Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan also raised their price targets after the Investor Day, putting Goldman’s Neutral stance in the minority among analysts who moved their numbers higher but stopped short of a Buy rating.
The bigger test is whether legacy chipmakers can outrun their old markets
Qualcomm’s pivot is part of a wider scramble among chipmakers built on markets, phones, PCs, networking gear, that have already peaked or slowed, to find growth in the data center buildout reshaping the industry. Intel, Marvell, and Arm have all made similar bets with mixed results so far.
Qualcomm’s fiscal third-quarter earnings report, due in early August, will be the first real checkpoint.
Investors will find out whether the company’s data center pipeline is converting into actual shipments, or whether the Investor Day optimism was simply the easiest part of the story to tell.
Related: Goldman Sachs revamps SpaceX stock price target for 2026