Many technology companies were off to the races when the AI boom first started, but Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) initially seemed slow to adapt.

Not anymore. The company has shifted its strategy toward artificial intelligence processors, applying its existing knowledge of edge computing to AI. It recently made a nearly $4 billion acquisition of an AI company to expand its reach for data center tech. No wonder its shares are up 66% over the past three months.

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Better yet, Qualcomm's shares are still a great deal compared to the broader tech sector. Here's why it might be worth buying this AI stock right now.

Qualcomm's big shift to AI

Qualcomm has been busy expanding its AI footprint, and a few notable shifts make the company's AI angle intriguing.

Most recently, Qualcomm acquired the AI company Modular in an all-stock deal valued at about $4 billion. Modular makes software that can run any AI model across many different hardware platforms. It also has an AI coding language.

The purchase means Qualcomm expands its ability to benefit from growth in the AI data center infrastructure market through software. Adding the new programming language could help it compete with Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) and its CUDA language.

Nvidia is a formidable opponent, of course, but Qualcomm is taking aim at the AI inference market, where Nvidia is vulnerable. Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs) have dominated the data center market for years, but tech companies are realizing that custom processors (which Qualcomm sells) can be better for AI inference and general tasks.

To help capture this market, Qualcomm just debuted its new Dragonfly C1000 CPU at its recent investor day, launching a powerful enterprise data center chip. The company is already inking deals with hyperscalers, with Meta announcing it has entered a multi-year agreement to use Qualcomm's processors in its data centers.

What's more, Qualcomm's management estimated that by fiscal 2029, the company will have more than $15 billion in AI infrastructure revenue. That's up from essentially nothing right now.

Finally, Qualcomm has been selling processors for everything from smartphones to cars for years. These chips are part of what's called edge computing, in which most processing is done on the device rather than in the cloud.