Qualcomm debuts latest Snapdragon 8s AI chip for Android devices

Qualcomm (QCOM) debuts its Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip to power generative AI features in Android smartphone devices. Yahoo Finance Live monitors Qualcomm's stock movement in Monday's pre-market trading and what partnerships like this could mean for the semiconductor company moving forward.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor's note: This article was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video Transcript

- And we want to get to one of the trending tickers that we are watching. That is Qualcomm. Showing its commitment to the generative AI space, announcing its newest smartphone chip. Now, the Snapdragon 8S Gen 3 is going to be available on Android smartphones.

The company really positioning the chip as a generative AI processor. Now, this new chip is meant to bring generative AI to more affordable smartphones. Shares are moving higher on this announcement. You're looking at a gain of just about 2% here in the pre market.

But again, this 8S Gen 3 aiming to bring generative AI to devices here more affordable phones, representing a new tier for this top of the line 8 series that we know Qualcomm has been focused on over the last several years. And looking forward here, they're saying that it's going to be able to support multimodal generative AI on device and also can run those large language models of up to 10 billion parameters. So again, extremely powerful chip here. What exactly this means then for getting more AI capabilities within smartphones similar to the discussion that we were just having with Apple and Google, and their partnership there.

- Yeah, this has been a standout period for Qualcomm to really prove themselves to the market right now, doing so early this year up by about 19% year to date. And if you take that out over the past year, the company is up by about 37%. I think one of the other critical things that caught investors' attention, at least a few weeks ago to begin March was the increase in the dividend as well.

And so going forward now, major partnerships like this also continuing to make sure that the street is not fearful of any type of major shift in the relationship with Apple. All of these things considered. And we were able to speak with the CFO of Qualcomm to really dive in on what the implications of that relationship plus making sure that it's investing further in its research and development.

I think that CapEx is most notably as well, something that at a time like this, where there's heavy investment that needs to be put forward keeping pace with the industry innovation that Qualcomm isn't overspending but also isn't missing out on opportunity. This is a clear opportunity that they've identified, and we'll see how it's brought to market. Certainly is right shares moving to the upside here, up just about 2% in pre-market trading.