Broadcom says AI companies can’t make their own silicon

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, speaking on the Q1 2026 earnings call, argued that AI companies and hyperscalers cannot successfully design and deploy their own silicon for many years due to challenges in talent acquisition, production scale, packaging, and networking. Broadcom's AI silicon revenue grew 106% year-over-year to $8.4B, with major deployments planned for Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Tan projected Broadcom has line of sight to $100B+ in AI chip revenue by 2027. The company's networking business also grew 60% YoY. On the software side, VMware grew 13% and Tan positioned VMware Cloud Foundation as essential infrastructure for enterprise AI, while overall software revenue reached $6.8B with a Q2 forecast of $7.2B.