Qualcomm up 7% on report it’s partnering with OpenAI on smartphone AI chip

qualcomm shares jumped 7% monday on a report it's partnering with openai to build a smartphone ai chip. tf international securities analyst ming-chi kuo said qualcomm and mediatek will develop the chip, with luxshare co-designing and building it. mass production is expected in 2028. qualcomm is down 13% year-to-date. kuo said openai needs full control of both os and hardware to deliver a "comprehensive ai agent service," and that smartphones capture the user's full real-time state — the most important input for real-time ai inference. he called smartphones the "largest-scale device category" for the foreseeable future. openai acquired apple design chief jony ive's startup io for $6.4 billion in equity last year to design new ai devices. sam altman said those devices will be different from smartphones, able to "know everything you've ever thought about, read, said." qualcomm, openai, and mediatek did not confirm the partnership.