0:03 spk_0
Welcome to the opening bid podcast. I’m Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sazi. Of course, opening bid is sponsored by Vanguard. You’re gonna get a lot smarter on all things technology and AI because I got a very special guest here that it’s coming to me at the NASDAQ in Times Square on a very special moment for his company. That’s Qualcomm President CO Cristiano Alman. Good to see you. Good to see you, Brian. It’s been a while and we’re here at the NASDAQ 40 years since Qualcomm was.How is that even possible?
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It’s, it’s times went fast and and it goes fast if you’re busy. So, uh,
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so what are some of those? I mean, you started the company 30 years ago, 1995 as an engineer. What are some of the, I guess, the historical fun facts about Q Qualcomm that the average human may not know?
0:47 spk_1
Well, it’s, uh, it’s hard to answer the question. There’s so many different things, but I will highlight, um, you know, I joined 1995 right before the very first launch of a CDMA operated in the world. A couple of things, uh.On this journey, I think it’s a journey of a company always kind of fighting against the odds try to prove everybody that you know the technologies that we dream of, they work, they will change the world. I remember when I started, nobody believed CDMA. We had to build our own infrastructure. We had to build our own phone.How to build everything to prove it, take it all over the world to show that the technology is incredible. I remember when 3G moved to 4G, everybody said Qualcomm is gone, is gone because we’re gonna go from CMA to OFDMA and we have to prove everybody we’re the OFDMA leader, uh, in the industry.Uh, phones were becoming computer. We had from a wireless communication company, no computing technology. We end up building the very first processor, a company they had built no processors. The very first processor that could run an OS, uh, and had a clock at 1 gigahertz speed that fits in the palm of your hand, and that was the beginning of our journey towards what Snapdragon is today, uh, we, we were.Through the spirit we realize that technology could be disruptive to so many industries. People told us you can never be an auto company unless you buy somebody and look at where we are in auto. Somebody said you can’t go to the PC market. That’s a market already occupied by incumbents and never be displaced. Here’s where we enter the PC market and now we’re in this journey on AI and industrial data centers. So those 40 years it’s been the story.Of reinventing ourselves, come up with technology that to prove to people it’s better, it’s going to work and just executing against all odds. That’s that’s the company in 40 years.
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What I didn’t realize, I’m a bit of a corporate name geek. I never realized all these years of cover from your company and some of your predecessors at the company. It stands for Quality communications. The company was founded by Irwin Jacobs, and was focused on quality communications.
2:57 spk_1
We build quality.Stuff, you know, I was just uh uh reminding people it’s interesting. I have to sometimes people ask me about the Qualcom name that it means quality communication and I thought, wow, I have the best example ever to describe what that actually means. You probably remember when there were the Mars ingenuity helicopter, the NASA mission that you have the very first flight in a non in an atmosphere in a different planet.The Mars engineered helicopter. The Mars engineered helicopter, the whole helicopter when NASA had this mission runs on Snapdragon.And it came out of the rover start flying around. There’s flight control it has cameras. It has communication sending radio signals. The beauty of this whole, uh, project with NASA is exact the same Snapdragon they were on people’s phones like the one that we build hundreds of millions, and the thing is if you put that into that.You go in a rocket in extreme temperature pressure. You go to a different planet, you have to boot and work, and he has no option. He has to work. It’s just one, so I cannot think of anything better to describe. We build quality stuff. This is quality communications atwork.
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So it’s, uh, it’s the end of May, and I’m watching, um, the news of course on on Yahoo Finance, and then I see, I see you shaking hands with the crown prince. uh, the president is standing.Next to the Crown Prince in Saudi Arabia is part of that delegation. I know that guy, it’s Cristiano. We used to talk to him. He was the president of Qualcomm beforehand or just before you became CEO and that before we get into why you were there, that had to be a surreal moment as someone as someone that started as an engineer.To be there in that moment, what was that like?
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Uh, the whole thing, the whole thing for me, look, I’m incredibly proud and I feel, uh, you know, privileged to have the trust of, uh, you know, from our board our investors and most important like all the Qualalcon employees to lead this company. When I joined Qualalcon as an engineer, I never had any dreams. I’ll be a CEO uh, never expected that we will be relevant in in an important partner of so many industries, so many countries.Um, it’s incredible. At the same time, it comes with a huge pressure that, you know, there’s so many folks at Qualcomm that that’s counting on me that you know I can’t, I have to show up every day and do my best because I cannot disappoint the trust, but yes, it’s incredible. It’s I never expected it’s uh it’s really humbling and uh that was a great moment for me.
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Sowhat did Qualcomm secure from that trip?
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Look, uh, as you know, we, we just, uh, released a little bit of some, I’ll say, uh, data points they’re showing what we’re doing next on a diversification journey and uh we’re entering the data center space. We feel that’s massive opportunity is this massive t is going to grow for decades and I think we have some technology that is very unique and disruptive.We have proven that we can probably do one of the world’s best CPUs and when AI starts to go from creation in those data centers into scale production, it gets we develop AI as as as an industry for that to be used in every computer when you go to them.That scales performance per watt performance per dollar matter, and that’s kind of the the DNA that we have from building the devices at the edge. So we look at the data center opportunity we can build CPUs. We can build inference AI process for the data center.There’s this new company in Saudi called Humane which is incredibly disruptive. It’s a big countrywide project to start diversifying their economy. I feel like in the same way about what they’re trying to do, what Qualcom is trying to do, we’re trying to diversify and create new areas of growth and development.We’re betting on them. They’re betting on Qualcomm. So, uh, what we announced in that trip, it was a combination of very strategic projects and it kind of matches some of the initiatives we have for growth and diversification. The first one is our, our activity now, uh, entering the data center space, and we’re gonna build chips for the humane data center. That’s one, with the new, uh, Saudi AI company called Humane.The second one is we’ve been talking about the industrial transformation at the edge, the next industrial semis in the age in the age of AI, so we have a very broad partnership with Orranco, which is the one of the world’s largest, uh, you know, energy companies using AI at the edge to transform their operations, very exciting project that that we have there. The number 3.Uh, as we enter in the PC space, they’re building very interesting PCs for their market. They have their large language model called AA that they developed, which is gonna be the front end in Arabic for all of the different applications, uh, and.They wanted to connect those PCs with their data center offer inference as a server uh service that’s gonna be part of what we actually been talking about which is this change of a PC into an AI device. So those are some of the.Three major projects. There’s more, I think that we’re doing in Saudi Arabia. That was a very successful trip for
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us. We saw a lot of big numbers, not just from your company, a lot of companies that went there Nvidia, AMD went there. What is that Saudi Arabia opportunity mean?Return financially to a business like.
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Look, um, we, if you step back, we said between now and 2029, uh, we’re gonna be uh generated about $22 billion of our goal, our goal is when we get to fiscal 29, we’ll have $22 billion of non handset revenue which is all of those growth initiatives actually coming to scale and we’re gonna be a diversified company at that point in time.Um, the stuff that we’re doing in the data center is not included in that number. That’s an upside to that number. Uh, we, we have a long term commitment in Saudi Arabia. Uh, I, I saw that yesterday they kind of indicated a $22 billion I think, uh, uh, you know, commitment, uh, to Qualcomm, but it’s just the beginning. I think we’ve been building.Uh, products for the data centers, that’s incremental to our plan. What we’re doing in PCs, we’re doing in Ronco is part of our $22 billion plan. You should look at this as more certainty and data points on this trajectory that we are to diversify the company and achieve our $22 billion in our handsets by fiscal 29.
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All right, hang with us, uh, Christiane, we’re gonna go off for a quick break. We’ll be right back on opening bid.Alright, welcome back to opening bid here at the NASDAQ in Times Square. Having a great chat here with Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Aman. Um, so the data center push. There’s an, there’s an AMD in there. There’s an Intel, and I, if I’m right, didn’t Qualcomm try data centers in the past? Like how do you make this successful this time? Yes,
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so it’s, it’s a great point and maybe um.There are two answers. Let me start with the first one easy. Uh, it is a market that has a number of incredible players like, uh, on CPU you have AMD, you have Intel, you have ARM indicated that they’re gonna build a chip enter in the data center. You have some of the companies that’ve been building a lot of the custom, uh, CPU. My answer to you is the same answer I I provided before when people ask me about PCs.PCs is a market actually unlike the data center doesn’t grow as much. Data centers growing a lot. It’s a very big time, but in PCs people said there’s a lot of established players are you gonna enter? And the answer is if I have something that is disruptive, it is unique, it’s innovative, and it will add value there’s gonna be room for me and I think that’s we did with Snapdragon Axelite.Applied the same approach when you think about data center actually data center, unlike PC is a massive, will continue to grow at a very high uh growth rates for decades. If we can build something unique and disruptive, there’s room for Qualcomm. Now the second part of the answer is our journey we started, if you remember, we were the first company to start to build an armM compatible, uh, CPU, uh, for the data center.And we did way before everybody else and I’ll be honest, we’re a little early at the time for the opportunity. What happened and uh when we attempted to do that, there were two, obstacles. One obstacle is the software ecosystem wasn’t mature at that time. The data center opportunity was a general purpose computing that needs to run everything that is on the cloud which has been built on X86, and the arm ecosystem wasn’t ready at all at that time.It was not until companies like Amazon with their graviton uh uh uh program that actually did a lot of the heavy lifting to bring the arm ecosystem on board that doesn’t existed at the time so that was very limiting on, on, on the addressable market. The other reason at the time is the entire industry was looking for alternative to the incumbent was in tell that uh uh the incumbent on the data center.Then something happened. uh, EMD started to use a better transistor going to, uh, TSMC, and, uh, and that become the alternative to Intel and the ARM, uh, plan, you know, got pushed aside. So I think we were a little early. We learned a bunch of things to the process we’re early we focused the company on putting a plan in place to build growth and diversification in those markets we’re doing right now.As we get those things in motion and they’re being in the process of execution, create this opportunity for now to enter at the right time. Why is now the right time? And I think that’s a more interesting answer to the question. First, the nature of the data center is changing. You still have general purpose computing.Uh, but now AM is where the growth is with a much more mature software ecosystem. We checked that box. The second thing is data centers are being built for AI. Every time you build data centers with incredible, I think Nvidia GPUs used for training, you need CPUs that go alongside.And you have a lot of custom activity, so that’s a, that’s a different approach than what the CPU job was. It’s very focused and it’s very focused on performance per dollar, performance per watt. That’s kind of our DNA.The other thing is the opportunity for inference as AI gets scale. It needs to be economic. It needs to compete. You look at how people start talking about tokens per dollar and why tokens per dollar starts to move to the Middle East because energy is cheaper there when there is a performance per dollar and performance per watt, it creates an opportunity for Quocom.We look at those things. We look at our assets. We have proven to have one of the best CPU teams in the world. What we did in just phones and auto and PCs. We can build a great CPU if you believe, um, you know, companies are gonna build arm chilets like AM saying they’re gonna do themselves. If you believe those companies can do it and there’s an opportunity, Quin can do it.We’re a real chip company. We ship 40 billion components a year and we have a great CPU. That’s opportunity and AI is gonna get so much scale and it’s gonna beinteresting.
14:51 spk_0
A large part of your business is of course China, about 45-46% of your your business. When you’re on that trip in Saudi Arabia, are you able to get a minute or two with the president and, and.Explain, hey, you know, we’re a US company. We have this big business in China and then secondarily, has your strategy changed because of the trade war? Look,
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this is, uh, I I actually love answering this question, and you’re probably gonna hear, um, in this interview something different than uh what I’ve been saying. What news
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person doesn’t like differentfire away, Christiane.
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Yes, um, I’m actually gonna explain something a little different than I have been talking about it before.The fact that we’re very successful in China, uh, think about it this way. The fact that we’re very successful in China is a feature. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. And the reason I say that is because we move at the speed of China. If you look at what happened in the transformation of uh of uh many industries uh in China.We have been there uh and we have not only survived with Trive that means we can be competitive in China. It’s one of the most competitive markets in the world we can be competitive in China. We move at China speed. That’s a feature. You want an American company that is going to be providing technology.Uh, for the world to be extremely competitive and be able to win everywhere with innovation, not only in the US, not only, uh, in Europe, not only in, uh, in Korea, in Japan, but everywhere including China. That’s the first part. The second part.Is the reason we have a big business in China is because what we do matters. Uh, if you are, and that’s true for the entire semi-in industry for companies that are building not commodity but leading technologies true for Nvidia it’s true, uh, for Qualcomm, it’s true, uh, for all of the other semiconductor companies. If what you’re doing is innovative, it’s just a function of GDP size you’re gonna have a big business everywhere, you’re gonna have a big business in China. #3.We’re a company that is actually helping.Uh, the trade deficit, we export semiconductors. Actually what we’re doing is in the right direction of trade, high value semiconductors that have been exported to China.Uh, in the right direction of trade, and then the last point is you want to end up in a situation that the American technology is exactly winning at the world scale. We want to be in a situation that is American technology for the world that drives our innovation economy that give us scale that we continue to invest and actually support and partner uh with.All of the companies they’re gonna be needing our technologies for years to come when you look at this whole package, I think we’re very proud I think of the business we have in China and I think in the many discussions we’ve been having with the administration, I think like I said before, um, it’s good to actually have uh American technology in a way that it can win it.Can win in the markets worldwide including China and be in the right direction of trade being supporting our innovation engine and uh we like we it’s a technology that is developed in the United States and as a matter of fact you know because you’ve been covering us for a while we have one of the world’s largest licensing business and actually we get paid.In China, but of our customers for intellectual property, that’s another great thing. So I think in summary we want to put ourselves in a position that we can actually be an example what a successful cooperation and trade be between two countries, the two countries are, and I think that’s what we’ll continue to do.
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I’d loveto end on this, um, Christiano, for as long as I’ve talked to you, you’ve always been focused on diversification, um, and part of that I would think is because of the Apple business, of course you make a key player a long time in the Apple supply chain.But now I think the stat was from Evercore. You saw you’re about to see you may have 70% market share in the iPhone 17 that might continue to decrease. Is there a day when Qualcomm is not involved in the Apple ecosystem because they make their ownchips?
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Look, we have been incredibly transparent about this, and, uh, every time we have a contract with Apple, we made it very public where they are, so there is no guessing, right? So we had said.Uh, and I think we provide, uh,
19:11 spk_0
you do a verygood job of doing this. I, I, oh, it has always been, has always been very transparent.
19:16 spk_1
Thank you. So what we said is, uh, you know, in the iPhones, uh, they launch, uh, this year, uh, we expected, I think we indicated we expected to have about, uh, 70% share if I believe that’s the metric we provided.Then we said in the iPhones uh launching next year we expect to have about uh I believe the metric was 20%, 20% share and then we don’t expect it to be in the iPhones, uh, launching 27.Uh, that’s our contract, you know, and, uh, if they, if we don’t get a new contract, that’s what it is, but and there’s so much drama and association about, uh, the Apple relationship which I think it’s, it’s not warranted, to be honest, we’re a great supplier for Apple. We provide a modem. Our contract has a beginning, has a middle, has an end. We communicated what it is. Apple’s doing their own modem. We’re planning our business assuming that they are going to use their own modem.And what exciting thing about the company is all of this growth that we’re creating all of those other markets including on Android. Like if you look at our Android business is continued to grow. I think our customers are doing incredibly well. The China market dynamics when you look at share about uh what Android is doing.Primenter, it’s a great dynamic for Cuco, and we’ll continue to build great technologies. I think the Apple thing is we have a contract. We communicate with the end. That’s how we’re planning our business. The Apple is gonna be off the model 27. We’re focused on everything else, everything else above that is upside.
20:46 spk_0
Fair to say that the next 40 years of Qualcomm will look different than the prior 40.
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Oh, absolutely. I cannot tell you one year of Qualcomm that is uh the same as, uh, the past year, and I think that’s what make the company exciting.
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All right, we’ll leave it there. Always good to see you, Qualcomm president and CEO Christianoone here at the Nasdaq in Times Square. Appreciate you coming on the pod. Thank you, Brian. All right, that’s it for the latest episode of Opening bid. Continue to hit us with all those, uh, hearts and thumbs up on YouTube and all the podcast platforms. Appreciate the love, appreciate the feedback, and we’ll talk to you soon.
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