Broadcom reported fiscal third-quarter revenue of $29.6 billion on 2 September, up 86% on the year and above the $29.4 billion analysts expected, with adjusted earnings of $3.32 a share against a $3.24 estimate. AI semiconductor revenue reached $16.7 billion, up 221%, and now makes up about 70% of the chip business. The shares still fell more than 6% after hours, because guidance for the fourth quarter of about $34.8 billion landed just under the $35 billion the market had priced in.
Hock Tan, the chief executive, told analysts Broadcom expects to ship around $350 billion to six large cloud customers across its 2027 and 2028 financial years, split roughly $115 billion then $230 billion. He said Anthropic is on track to become the largest buyer of its custom chips in 2027, with OpenAI second, both ahead of Google.
Broadcom is the main route for hyperscalers that want to design their own AI silicon rather than buy Nvidia’s, so a business tripling in a year is real evidence the custom-chip path has arrived. That a quarter this large still pushed the stock down shows how much of the AI trade now rests on each forecast beating the last one, not on the results in hand.
Broadcom did not name the six customers or break the $350 billion down by buyer, so the concentration is not visible from outside. It did not say how much of the 2028 figure rests on chips still being designed, or what the number does if one customer pulls back. Anthropic and OpenAI, the two it leans on hardest, are both relying on outside financing to cover their chip orders. The backlog is a firm number. The names underneath it are not.
