Qualcomm announced on June 24, 2026, that it will acquire Silicon Valley AI chip startup Modular in an all-stock transaction valued at nearly $4 billion [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. The deal involves Qualcomm issuing up to 19.2 million shares of its common stock to Modular’s equity holders and is expected to close in the second half of 2026, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals [1, 3, 4, 5, 6].
Modular was founded in 2022 by former Google engineers Chris Lattner and Tim Davis. The startup develops an AI software platform and proprietary programming language that allows developers to write AI code once and run it across multiple chip architectures, including CPUs, GPUs, NPUs, and ASICs, without rewriting [4, 5, 7, 6]. Its last funding round valued the company at $1.6 billion just nine months before this acquisition [4, 6].
Qualcomm plans to integrate Modular’s roughly 150 employees, including its cofounders, into its operations [4, 6]. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said, “We believe the future belongs to developer-friendly, horizontal platforms that can run across diverse compute environments and give customers real choice in how and where they deploy AI” [3]. Modular CEO Chris Lattner added the partnership with Qualcomm would help “make AI development more accessible and improve performance for developers” [5].
With this acquisition, Qualcomm aims to expand beyond mobile device chips into AI data center markets and edge AI segments by providing horizontally integrated AI platforms that support multiple hardware types [1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 6]. The deal positions Qualcomm to compete more directly with Nvidia’s CUDA platform and AMD’s ROCm in the AI inference software market [1, 4, 6].
This follows Qualcomm’s late 2025 purchase of Ventana Micro Systems, a startup focused on RISC-V server CPUs, as part of Qualcomm’s broader push into data center chips [4, 6]. The Modular acquisition highlights Qualcomm’s strategic move toward software-defined AI computing support.
The transaction is valued at about $3.9 to $4 billion based on Qualcomm’s recent share price and Reuters’ calculations [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. The deal is expected to close later this year pending regulatory approvals [1, 3, 5, 6].
