People pass in front of the building in Gangnam, Seoul, that houses Qualcomm Korea's headquarters. /Courtesy of News1 DB

U.S. semiconductor corporations Qualcomm is unveiling a new AI accelerator chip to take on NVIDIA, a powerhouse in the AI semiconductor market.

Qualcomm said in a news release on the 27th (local time) that it plans to launch its AI200 and AI250 data center AI accelerator chips in 2026 and 2027, respectively. The new products mainly target the inference chip market, which runs AI models in production rather than training them.

Qualcomm said its new AI chips have an edge over rivals in power efficiency, total cost of ownership, and memory handling. Senior Vice President Durga Malladi said, "Thanks to Qualcomm's rich software ecosystem and support for open platforms, developers and corporations will be able to easily integrate, manage, and scale already trained AI models," emphasizing the strengths of the company's AI inference solution.

So far, Qualcomm has been recognized for its competitiveness in semiconductors for mobile devices and telecommunications equipment. The announcement is seen as a signal that Qualcomm aims to expand its business into the data center AI chip market. U.S. business outlet CNBC predicted, "Qualcomm's entry will further intensify competition in the data center AI Semiconductor market."

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