Chip stocks mixed in premarket trading. Arm fell 5% while Qualcomm declined 4% after earnings; Nvidia continued to rise 0.8% after a 5% rally in prior session; Super Micro up 3%.

Arm Holdings shares slumped 6% in premarket trading after the report. The Chip tech provider said on Wednesday it will no longer meet the top end of its previous full-year guidance, but slightly topped Wall Street's current-quarter expectations.

Since Arm went public in 2023, it has more than tripled its market value as investors bet it would see a significant share of the artificial intelligence boom that propelled Nvidia to become the world's most valuable company.

But Arm does not typically enjoy growth spurts in boom times because it makes money more indirectly from AI than chip sellers, by steadily raising licensing fees for its technology and royalties for each chip other companies sell.

For the full year, Arm narrowed its revenue guidance to a range of $3.94 billion to $4.04 billion from $3.8 billion to $4.1 billion. The company also narrowed its adjusted earnings per share guidance for the full year.

Qualcomm Inc., the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, fell 4% in premarket trading on investor fears that demand for new handsets will stall in the coming year.

Revenue in the period ending in March will be $10.3 billion to $11.2 billion, the company said Wednesday in a statement. Of that, the company’s licensing business will generate $1.25 billion to $1.45 billion. That compares with an average analyst projection of $1.4 billion.

The outlook for the technology license business, which is based on a projection of the number of phones sold, caused some analysts to question Qualcomm’s view of the industry’s prospects.

Chief Financial Officer Akash Palkhiwala said the company expects the overall market to be either flat in 2025 or increase in low single digits. That projection doesn’t include any revenue from China-based Huawei Technologies Co., which is renegotiating its license with Qualcomm, executives said.

Qualcomm’s outlook for the business is in line with analyst firm IDC, which projected that worldwide smartphone shipments would be in the “low single digits” in 2025 and for a few years beyond.

The San Diego-based chipmaker collects fees calculated as a percentage of the cost of a handset regardless of whether the phone maker uses its chips. Qualcomm won those rights in intellectual property lawsuits around the world, establishing that it can charge royalties on its patents that cover the basic way that phones connect with networks.

Nvidia stock rose slightly in premarket trading after a 5.21% rally in prior session, bolstered by continued Capex spending boosts by hyperscalers and the ramping of its new Blackwell chip. 

On its conference call Tuesday evening, Google-parent Alphabet said they would spend $75 billion in capex in 2025 versus prior analyst expectations of $58 billion.

"Our results show the power of our differentiated full-stack approach to AI innovation and the continued strength of our core businesses. We are confident about the opportunities ahead, and to accelerate our progress, we expect to invest approximately $75 billion in capital expenditures in 2025," Alphabet said.

Other large Nvidia clients, Microsoft and Meta, also said they would increase their budgets for AI infrastructure.

Shares of Nvidia have been under pressure for the past few weeks after China AI upstart DeepSeek raised questions about overall capex budgets after releasing their AI model with a very minimal amount spent and using old Nvidia chips. Nvidia's stock is down 7% year-to-date.

In addition to Google's higher Capex spending, AI server maker and Nvidia partner Supermicro announced Wednesday the full production availability of its end-to-end AI data center Building Block Solutions, accelerated by the Nvidia Blackwell platform. Supermicro shares rose 3.6% in premarket trading.

"In this transformative moment of AI, where scaling laws are pushing the limits of data center capabilities, our latest Nvidia Blackwell-powered solutions, developed through close collaboration with Nvidia, deliver outstanding computational power," said Charles Liang, president and CEO of Supermicro.

All eyes will be fixated on Nvidia going into the company's all-important earnings report on February 26th.