Qualcomm has signed a second agreement with a large-scale data center operator, or hyperscaler, to jointly design and produce artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators. The deal marks tangible progress in AI for Qualcomm, which has historically relied on smartphone chips for most of its revenue.

Akash Palkhiwala, Qualcomm’s chief financial officer (CFO), said at the Goldman Sachs Technology Conference 2026 on Sept. 8 that the company is working with another global hyperscaler in addition to Amazon. He said the custom silicon Qualcomm is developing with hyperscalers is intended not for auxiliary workloads but as primary AI accelerators in data centers.

The remarks indicate that Qualcomm is developing AI accelerators optimized for the customer’s data centers and services. Palkhiwala did not identify the hyperscaler. Major hyperscalers include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Google, Meta, Oracle and IBM. Qualcomm is already working with Amazon and Meta.

The agreement with the undisclosed hyperscaler is expected to be similar in structure to Qualcomm’s Amazon deal. Qualcomm and Amazon recently announced a collaboration on customized silicon for data center AI acceleration and high-performance optical connectivity solutions.

Qualcomm will supply the products to Amazon over the next 10 years. The agreement is valued at a total of $60 billion, or about 80.514 trillion won. Amazon will also receive warrants that vest in proportion to its purchases. The structure is intended to strengthen and extend the companies’ long-term partnership. Qualcomm has begun chip production, while Amazon has secured 15% of the warrants.

“The Amazon agreement is very large, but it is only the beginning,” Palkhiwala said. He added that Qualcomm’s technology collaboration with another hyperscaler is taking a similar form and is making strong progress.

Qualcomm has also agreed to supply data center central processing units (CPUs) to Meta. Its Dragonfly C1000 is planned for Meta’s next-generation server fleet. Dragonfly is Qualcomm’s data center product portfolio. Qualcomm is targeting more than twice the performance per watt of existing competing server CPUs with the C1000. A server fleet refers to a group of servers operating together to perform the same function.

Qualcomm expects its agreements with Amazon, Meta and the undisclosed hyperscaler to help push data center product revenue above 20 trillion won in three years. “We have already made significant progress toward our fiscal 2029 target of $15 billion, or about 20.07 trillion won,” Palkhiwala said. “We are at a point where we don’t need that many additional business elements.”

Qualcomm has recently been focusing its experience in advanced-node chip design and high-volume manufacturing on its custom silicon business. It is also developing Dragonfly commercial AI accelerators that are not customized for individual customers: the AI250 and AI300. The AI250 is scheduled for mid-2027, followed by the AI300 in 2028. Both products will incorporate Qualcomm High Bandwidth Compute (HBC) memory technology.

SK hynix plans to save a cumulative 600 million tons of water at its Korean operations by 2030.

The company said it is presenting its water conservation achievements and targets at Korea International Water Week 2026, held at EXCO in Daegu from Sept. 9 to 11. Its exhibition booth highlights major water conservation, recycling and ecosystem preservation activities through videos and graphics.

SK hynix has operated a water and wastewater reduction task force since 2018, reducing water consumption and expanding reuse in semiconductor manufacturing. As a result, its Korean operations saved an average 170,000 tons of water per day last year, equivalent to the daily household water consumption of about 550,000 people.

Cumulative water savings reached 303.37 million tons by the end of last year, exceeding the company’s target of 264 million tons. SK hynix aims to increase the total to 329 million tons this year. Water reuse rose about 54% to 73.59 million tons last year from 47.88 million tons in 2022.

SK hynix’s Icheon site produces 94,400 tons of recycled water per day through its wastewater reuse facilities. The recycled water is supplied to facilities including air pollution control systems. Its Cheongju site became the first in Korea’s semiconductor industry to introduce externally treated reclaimed wastewater in 2023, recycling it for industrial use.

The company is also strengthening water management across the entire cycle from intake and use to recycling and discharge. Its wastewater treatment processes include ozone oxidation, activated carbon and multistage coagulation and sedimentation systems. SK hynix continues to develop and invest in additional technologies to reduce pollutants.

SK hynix also carries out activities to monitor local communities and ecosystems. It operates the ECOSEE citizen science program around Anseong Stream to track ecological changes before and after development of the Yongin semiconductor cluster. Citizens participate directly in surveys of plants, birds and aquatic organisms and in collecting data.

“We will continue to advance our water management system to use less water, which is essential to semiconductor production, and reuse as much of it as possible,” SK hynix said. “We will also steadily expand investments in process improvements and related technologies and facilities.”

Startup Zeta Mobility is expanding its 4D radar artificial intelligence sensor-fusion technology, originally developed for autonomous driving, into senior care and healthcare. The company plans to produce tangible results this year through partnerships with a company and a university.

“We signed memorandums of understanding with two companies and institutions last month and began proof-of-concept testing,” Zeta Mobility Vice President Kim Sang-ki said on Sept. 9. The partners are senior care technology company Dolbomdream and Gachon University’s Intelligent Homecare Integrated Support Infrastructure Project Group, or AAL Center. Zeta Mobility aims to commercialize services for vulnerable populations using its technology.

Zeta Mobility is a deep-tech startup developing high-resolution 4D imaging radar and AI sensor-fusion technologies. The company was founded in February 2024 as a startup spun out of a laboratory at KAIST’s Graduate School of Mobility and joined the university’s startup incubator. In October that year, it was selected for the Ministry of SMEs and Startups’ Deep Tech TIPS program and Samsung Electronics’ C-Lab Outside startup support program. It was also selected for the ministry’s Super Gap Startup 1000+ program in April last year and received an award from the head of the Small and Medium Business Administration in May.

Radar emits electromagnetic waves, or millimeter waves, and analyzes reflected signals. Unlike conventional 3D radar, which measures distance, direction and speed, 4D imaging radar also captures height data. This allows scattered radar reflections to be converted into high-resolution three-dimensional point-cloud data.

Raw 4D radar data contains signal noise that makes it difficult to interpret. Zeta Mobility addresses this with its proprietary AI algorithm software, Zeta AI Engine. The software removes meaningless reflections and signal noise and extracts the shape of objects. By analyzing continuous time-series data, it can infer human movement, changes in posture and biometric signals such as heart and respiratory rates with more than 90% accuracy.

Zeta Mobility has integrated the technologies into three versions of its ARGUS platform, an intelligent system that detects, understands and transmits radar sensor data. The platform takes the form of a compact, low-power, high-efficiency board for edge AI, which runs AI models directly on devices where data is generated.

ARGUS-A is designed to detect safety conditions and driving environments for autonomous vehicles. ARGUS-C monitors vehicle occupants in real time. ARGUS-H is an indoor care product designed to detect falls among elderly people living alone and monitor biometric signals.

Zeta Mobility initially focused on autonomous driving and in-cabin occupant-detection sensors. But as commercialization and market adoption of autonomous driving progressed more slowly than expected, the company strategically shifted its business focus toward senior healthcare. Its 4D radar AI and sensor-fusion technologies can be applied to indoor residential spaces as well as vehicle interiors.

Partnerships With Dolbomdream, Gachon University to Test ARGUS-H

Zeta Mobility has secured infrastructure to test ARGUS-H through the two recently signed MOUs.

The company will first work with Dolbomdream on joint testing and commercialization of senior care and monitoring services. The companies plan to combine Zeta Mobility’s radar AI sensor technology with Dolbomdream’s wearable sensor-based healthcare technology and jointly pursue government projects and research and development programs. They also plan to expand their collaboration into worker safety management at industrial sites.

Existing senior-care technologies face trade-offs between accuracy, convenience and privacy. Falls among elderly people living alone frequently occur in private spaces such as bathrooms, toilets and bedrooms, where cameras face strong user resistance as well as ethical and legal constraints. Smartwatches and patch-type biosensors require users to wear them continuously and recharge them regularly. Elderly users may forget to wear the devices or take them off, creating monitoring gaps and potentially delaying responses to emergencies such as falls.

Zeta Mobility says its 4D radar AI technology can address those problems. ARGUS-H can be installed on a wall or ceiling to monitor an entire space without requiring the user to wear a device. Because it analyzes radar waveforms rather than visual images, it avoids capturing private visual information. It can also detect a person’s precise location and subtle movements in low-light or steam-filled environments where visibility is poor.

Zeta Mobility will work with Gachon University’s AAL Center to develop and commercialize intelligent homecare services for vulnerable populations. The center has researched a big-data platform for elderly people’s activities of daily living. Zeta Mobility plans to combine the university’s software and data research capabilities with its own technology to build infrastructure for real-time monitoring of elderly users.

The partners will also develop and deploy AI care equipment and personalized service models. They plan to support healthcare programs for elderly people run by local governments and community welfare organizations, while expanding into the senior healthcare and smart-home markets.

“We will use these recent demonstration agreements as a stepping stone to establish technical standards for smart-home senior care and secure our first supply contract with a construction company or healthcare platform within this year,” Kim said.