Qualcomm Plunges 10% in Premarket. Nvidia Launches New PC Superchip, Snapdragon Dominance May End

TradingKey - NVIDIA launches a brand-new super chip with NPU computing power double that of the Snapdragon X Elite; this overwhelming blow triggered a plunge in Qualcomm's stock price.

On June 1, Eastern Time, Qualcomm ( QCOM) saw its shares plunge over 10% in U.S. pre-market trading to $225, with more than $10 billion in market capitalization evaporating instantly. This completely shook Wall Street and the global tech community, and the trigger for this sudden "semiconductor earthquake" was AI giant NVIDIA ( NVDA) .

Qualcomm Stock Price Chart, Source: TradingView

During GTC on June 1, NVIDIA officially announced the RTX Spark super chip for Windows PCs and revealed that Dell ( DELL ), HP ( HPQ ), Microsoft ( MSFT ), Lenovo, and other mainstream PC brands will feature the chip starting this autumn. This move is seen as a challenge to Qualcomm's Snapdragon series, as the product is currently widely used in Windows AI PCs.

Reportedly, NVIDIA's RTX Spark super chip does not just slightly outperform its Qualcomm counterpart; it represents a catastrophic blow. The on-device computing power for AI models on this new NVIDIA PC super chip exceeds 100 TOPS or higher, while the NPU computing power of Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite is only around 45 TOPS, lagging far behind NVIDIA. Regarding this, Yuanqing Yang, Chairman and CEO of Lenovo Group, stated, "RTX Spark represents a significant leap in AI-native computing."

Over the past two years, Qualcomm has exclusively secured Microsoft's first wave of AI PC (Copilot+ PC) orders with its Snapdragon X Elite/Plus chips, driving its stock price steadily higher and positioning itself as the face of AI edge computing. Currently, reports indicate that Microsoft has internally relaxed the hardware exclusivity agreement for Copilot+, meaning Qualcomm will lose the support of its "exclusive moat," naturally leading its stock price toward a precipitous decline.

In contrast, NVIDIA's foray into the Arm PC market proves that Jensen Huang intends to capture not only all data center profits but also the consumer AI ecosystem, a move highly favored by investors. As of press time, NVIDIA's stock rose over 2% in pre-market trading to $215, reversing its downward trend from the past half-month. Driven by the new

NVIDIA Stock Price Chart, Source: TradingView

Although NVIDIA's latest chip surpasses Qualcomm's in performance, it does not mean all demand will shift toward it; price comparisons will still be considered. In the future, if Qualcomm wants to maintain a certain market share, it must lower prices to improve its cost-performance ratio to compete with NVIDIA; otherwise, it can only watch NVIDIA seize its market share. Of course, if Qualcomm can improve performance or introduce a new chip, it can compete with NVIDIA, but this is unlikely to be achieved in the short term.