AMD veteran Jason Banta is joining Qualcomm after the chip designer recently lost two top channel leaders who were hired from Apple to build its global partner program, which is meant to boost sales of its Snapdragon X Series processors for PCs.
Qualcomm has hired the former head of AMD’s CPU business with PC vendors to lead global compute sales as it continues to ramp up competition against Intel and other rivals.
The San Diego-based chip designer told CRN Friday that it appointed Jason Banta, a 23-year AMD veteran, as vice president of global compute sales. The role puts him in charge of Qualcomm’s “global compute sales organization across the consumer and commercial go-to-market channels,” according to the company.
“In PCs, the team has already built a solid foundation of technology, customer partnerships, and ecosystem enablement. I’m looking forward to this exciting journey with the Snapdragon team, as well as our customers and partners that will help us bring these solutions to everyone,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post Friday.
[Related: Qualcomm Loses Executive Who Was Key To Custom Arm CPU Push]
Banta announced his departure from AMD two weeks ago on LinkedIn after most recently serving as corporate vice president and general manager of client OEM. In this role, the executive led the growth of AMD’s PC business with OEMs, which has helped the company achieve record CPU share in the laptop and desktop segments against Intel.
He is joining Qualcomm after the chip designer recently lost two top channel leaders who were hired from Apple to build its global partner program, which is meant to boost sales of its Snapdragon X Series processors for PCs. Kyle Houser, who was global commercial channel chief, left in December, roughly four months after the departure of his boss, Jeff Monday, who was vice president of global enterprise and channel sales.
The departures of Houser and Monday, who rapidly grew Qualcomm’s commercial channel team over the past two years, prompted questions from some partners about the direction of the company’s channel strategy.
However, Qualcomm has maintained that it remains committed to the channel
“Channel technology partners remain essential to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon PC growth strategy,” a Qualcomm spokesperson said in a Friday statement to CRN.
“We are 100 percent committed to help our channel partners deliver end-to-end computing solutions through co-selling, training, marketing, OEM collaboration, and strategic incentive support,” the representative added.
Banta is taking over global compute sales at a critical time for Qualcomm’s custom Arm CPU efforts, which are key to the company’s push to diversify beyond its mobile handset business. These efforts include the Snapdragon X Series processors, which represent its revitalized push into the PC market after previous efforts failed to catch traction.
Last month, the company revealed its midrange Snapdragon X Plus chips for PCs under Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC banner. Qualcomm has been promoting its second-generation computer chips since last September, when it called its new flagship Snapdragon X2 Elite processors “the fastest, most powerful and efficient” for Windows PCs.
Qualcomm debuted the first-generation Snapdragon X Series in June 2024 as the exclusive launch processors for Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs, which allowed the company to beat Intel and AMD to the market in enabling exclusive, on-device AI features on Windows 11.
In an interview with CRN early last year, Monday called channel partners “super important” to Qualcomm’s $4 billion Snapdragon PC revenue goal in 2029 and said that its CEO, Cristano Amon, had made a “massive commitment” to funding partner programs. About 40 percent to 50 percent of unit sales were expected to come from commercial customers by then.
This commitment allowed the company last year to double channel funding, quadruple the size of its global commercial channel team and expand its roster of commercial channel partners by nearly 10 times to more than 100 partners. Monday claimed at the time that Qualcomm’s partner programs and funding were “hyper competitive.”
