Earlier this year, rumors suggested that some of Qualcomm's high-end Snapdragon chips launching in 2026 would be manufactured by Samsung. While Qualcomm unveiled two new chips last week, neither of them is made by Samsung Foundry. The company has now confirmed it is collaborating with Samsung for future chips.

During a press briefing at last week's Snapdragon Summit 2026, Chris Patrick, Qualcomm's Senior Vice President and Head of Mobile Handsets, highlighted the strong partnership between Qualcomm and Samsung Electronics. He stated that the chipmaker is working with Samsung Foundry to produce upcoming mobile processors.

Qualcomm is currently evaluating how to leverage Samsung's advanced 2nm fabrication process for future chips. The company aims to secure Samsung Foundry's position as a core, long-term partner, with Patrick noting that Samsung remains Qualcomm's strongest global partner.

It is highly possible that Qualcomm plans to use Samsung's second-generation 2nm process technology to manufacture its next-generation flagship Snapdragon platform.

Samsung's new smartwatches, the Galaxy Watch 9 and the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, use the Snapdragon Wear Elite chip. The South Korean firm's upcoming smart glasses also use a Snapdragon chip.

Additionally, the two companies have teamed up to overcome memory bottlenecks caused by heavy on-device AI computation on modern Snapdragon chips. Qualcomm is engaged with Samsung's memory division to bring LPDDR6 to mobile devices, jointly solving complex technical challenges such as new signaling methods and memory channel management.