Qualcomm Loses Executive Who Was Key To Custom Arm CPU Push

While Gerard Williams is the second high-profile engineering executive to leave Qualcomm in the past month following the exit of GPU architect Eric Demers, an analyst who closely follows the chip designer tells CRN that he doesn’t consider Williams’ departure as impactful.

Qualcomm has lost the founder and former CEO of the Nuvia chip startup it acquired nearly four years ago to boost its CPU business by focusing on custom Arm designs.

Gerard Williams, who was a senior vice president of engineering at Qualcomm, announced in a Monday LinkedIn post that he left the San Diego, Calif.-based chip designer last month with the intention to focus on familial pursuits such as “painting my house.”

A Qualcomm spokesperson told CRN that it does not comment on personnel matters.

Williams, a former Apple chip designer, joined Qualcomm in early 2021 through its acquisition of Nuvia, whose custom, Arm-compatible CPU designs have been key to the company’s revitalized push into the PC and server markets. The moves are part of a broader effort by Qualcomm to diversify beyond its mobile chipset business.

The executive was sued two years earlier by Apple, which accused him of breaching his employment contract, alleging that he started Nuvia while he was still at Apple and recruited his former colleagues to the startup. Apple dropped the lawsuit in 2023.

While Williams is the second high-profile engineering executive to leave Qualcomm in the past month following the exit of GPU architect Eric Demers, an analyst who closely follows the company told CRN that he doesn’t consider Williams’ exit as impactful. Demers left the company in mid-January to lead Intel’s data center GPU efforts.

“This was very much the culmination of the whole Nuvia acquisition taking its course,” said Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy. “I would say that he wasn’t really that involved by the time he left, so his departure isn’t really going to be very meaningful. But I do think the acquisition and integration of Nuvia was very pivotal and making sure that that was a success was important to him.”

Qualcomm has used the custom Oryon CPU designs initially developed by Nuvia for the Snapdragon X processors that debuted for PCs in 2024 as well as the Dragonwing-IX processors for industrial PCs and the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for smartphones, both of which were announced late last year. The company is also using Oryon for its automotive chip platforms, Snapdragon Cockpit Elite and Snapdragon Ride Elite.

In addition, the company said in a 2024 legal filing that it intended to use Oryon for the development of a new server CPU. Qualcomm then confirmed its plan to sell server CPUs last year after hiring the chief architect of Intel’s Xeon server chips.