Blog

(Reuters) -Qualcomm on Monday unveiled two artificial intelligence chips for data centers, with commercial availability from next year, as it pushes to diversify beyond smartphones and expand into the fast-growing AI infrastructure market.

Shares of Qualcomm surged nearly 15% on the news.

The new chips, called AI200 and AI250, are designed for improved memory capacity and running AI applications, or inference, and will be available in 2026 and 2027, respectively.

Global investment in AI chips has soared as cloud providers, chipmakers and enterprises rush to build infrastructure capable of supporting complex, large language models, chatbots and other generative AI tools.

Nvidia chips, however, underpin much of the current AI boom.

Qualcomm, to strengthen its AI portfolio, agreed to buy Alphawave in June, which designs semiconductor tech for data centers, for about $2.4 billion.

In May, Qualcomm also said it would make custom data center central processing units that use technology from Nvidia to connect to the firm’s artificial intelligence chips.

Qualcomm said the new chips support common AI frameworks and tools, with advanced software support, and added they will lower the total cost of ownership for enterprises.

The San Diego-based company also unveiled accelerator cards and racks based on the new chips.

Earlier this month, peer Intel announced a new artificial intelligence chip called Crescent Island for the data center that it plans to launch next year.

(Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Vijay Kishore)

Donald Trump is on course to push US debt levels above those of Italy and Greece by the end of the decade after wide-ranging tax cuts and increased defence spending, according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts.

Illustrating the rising debt levels in Washington and efforts made by Rome and Athens to bring spending under control after the 2008 financial crash and Covid-19 pandemic, the IMF predicts the US will see its debts climb from 125% to 143% of annual income by 2030, while Italy’s will flatline at about 137%.

Greece is on track to cut the ratio of debt to gross domestic product (GDP) from 146% to 130% over the same period. According to IMF data, Athens has tackled a budget overspend that raced to 210% as a proportion of GDP in 2020.

Amid tax cuts for high earners, the US is expected to run annual budget deficits of more than 7% over the next five years, while Italy is due to cut its spending shortfall this year to 2.9%, allowing it to meet a 3% limit set by Brussels a year early, in analysis first reported in the Financial Times.

Trump increased US government spending and cut federal taxes in the “big, beautiful bill”, passed by Congress in the summer, forcing the White House to rely more heavily on borrowing to fund annual spending.

The US president reversed efforts under the previous Biden administration to limit the size of the US deficit, offering tax cuts that will benefit mostly middle and high income groups. He has also pledged to build a “golden dome” defence shield, which could cost almost $1tn.

Spending increases could push the budget deficit higher by $7tn a year by the time Trump is due to leave office in January 2029.

Both Italy and Greece have committed to maintaining primary budget surpluses, which entail cuts in spending to below the incomes from tax receipts.

Italy’s growth rate is expected to average 0.5% over the next couple of years. Its population is falling due to a declining birthrate and a level of emigration that hit 200,000 last year, but Italy has seen average household incomes recover.

Lorenzo Codogno, the head of Lorenzo Codogno Macro Advisors and a former chief economist at Italy’s treasury department, said there was pressure on Giorgia Meloni’s government to increase spending in the wake of Trump’s tariffs and his demands for bigger European defence budgets.

He said: “The economy and public finances remain vulnerable to a sudden negative shift in the global scenario.”

Mahmood Pradhan, head of global macro at the Amundi Investment Institute, told the FT: “It is a symbolic moment, and according to the Congressional Budget Office the projections are for US debt to carry on rising – that is the impact of running perpetual deficits.

“But Italy has a weaker growth outlook than the US, so this should not be read as meaning Italy is out of the woods.”

James Knightley, chief international economist at ING, said: “Many US politicians and investors look down somewhat on Europe and its slow growth and struggling economies, but when you have metrics like this, the conversation changes.”