- Qualcomm currently sells AI accelerator processors, but has its sights set on the CPU market
- Sailesh Kottapalli’s expertise is in x86 architecture, not Arm
- But that didn’t stop Qualcomm from bringing him on board to lead its data center team
Qualcomm, known for its Snapdragon processors that power business smartphones and laptops around the world, has made a potentially key hire as it looks to challenge the likes of AMD and Intel in the processor market.
The company’s latest coup is hiring Sailesh Kottapalli, a former chief architect of Xeon processors and a 28-year Intel veteran.
Kottapalli joined Qualcomm as a senior vice president in early January 2025, bringing extensive expertise in designing high-performance x86 server chips.
Kottapalli’s move to Arm
Kottapalli wrote on LinkedIn that “the opportunity to innovate and grow while helping to scale new frontiers was extremely compelling to me—a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I couldn’t pass up.”
What makes the move significant, given Qualcomm’s reliance on arm-based designs, is Kottapalli’s expertise in x86 architecture. His leadership can help bridge the gap between Qualcomm’s existing technology and the demanding requirements for data center CPUs.
A renewed push for the data center
Qualcomm had pulled back from server CPU development back in 2018, but the company has now revealed plans to develop high-performance, energy-efficient server solutions tailored for data center applications.
That journey began with its Snapdragon X series of PCs, featuring custom Arm-based cores stemming from its $1.4 billion acquisition of startup Nuvia back in 2021, which built to a court-legal crescendo in Delaware in December 2024, when Arm alleged that Qualcomm’s acquisition violated its license terms. Although a federal jury sided with Qualcomm, Arm is seeking a new trial.
For now, however, Qualcomm has expanded its presence in the data center sector with AI accelerator chips under the Qualcomm Cloud AI brand supported by industry leaders such as AWS, HPE and Lenovo.
