As far as the stock market goes, the universal obsession with artificial intelligence has mostly centred on Nvidia. It is not surprising: the market capitalisation of the AI boom’s signature chipmaker has more than quadrupled in two years to $2.7tn. But in the past year, a dollar would have been better invested in its smaller, less well-known rival: Broadcom.
For both companies, the launch of ChatGPT in 2022 — and resulting rush to build AI data centres — has proved a windfall. AI-related activity made up just over a quarter of Broadcom’s revenue for the three months ending in February, up from essentially nothing just a few years ago. By June, it expects that to be 30 per cent, growing at more than 40 per cent a year.
Analysts have been happy to take these impressive rates and run with them. They estimate Broadcom’s total sales will exceed $80bn by 2027 — 60 per cent higher than last year. Within that, AI equipment sales are expected to grow 160 per cent, according to Visible Alpha. In Broadcom’s older businesses, such as broadband chips, they expect no growth at all.