Qualcomm will acquire Modular to build an open AI software ecosystem.

Qualcomm announced it has reached an agreement to acquire Modular, aiming to strengthen its software foundation for generative AI and agentic AI in data center and edge environments. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2026, pending customary closing conditions and relevant regulatory approvals. Qualcomm stated that Modular offers an open, AI-native software stack that enables AI to run efficiently across diverse hardware architectures. Its unified platform supports CPU, GPU, NPU, and custom ASIC architectures, eliminating the need to rewrite models for each type of accelerator. For developers and enterprises, this means they can build once and deploy across various environments while reducing total cost of ownership. Qualcomm noted that as AI scales, efficiency rather than capability is emerging as the limiting factor. Performance per watt impacts inference costs, and these costs determine whether AI can scale. This acquisition will further enable Qualcomm to deliver a chip-agnostic compute layer across devices, edge, and data centers, boosting performance per watt, increasing hardware flexibility, and expanding its open developer ecosystem.