By Mukundan Sivaraj · AIM Media House
Broadcom's latest earnings report revealed a tension at the center of its AI business. The company disclosed more than $30 billion in quarterly AI bookings, expanded its core customer count to six and said it now has visibility into customer demand through 2028.
Yet management maintained its forecast of more than $100 billion in annual AI semiconductor revenue by 2027. The decision stood out because Broadcom first introduced the $100 billion target in March, when it reported $8.4 billion in quarterly AI semiconductor revenue and outlined a path to surpass that level by 2027.
Since then, the company has added another core customer and announced new commitments involving Google, Anthropic and Meta. Investors were looking for evidence that Broadcom's expanding AI business would translate into a higher long-term target.
Instead, the company left its forecast unchanged and reported weaker-than-expected software revenue, contributing to a post-earnings selloff . "Our visibility runs all the way to 2028 right now," CEO Hock Tan said during the call. "Just three months ago, I can tell you visibility ran pretty much [to] 2027.
Today, it runs to 2028." The statement raises a question that runs through the rest of the earnings report: if customer commitments, bookings and planning horizons have all expanded, why has Broadcom's long-term revenue forecast remained the same?
The Deals Behind Broadcom's 2028 Visibility Broadcom's confidence is tied to agreements and commitments that stretch well beyond the current fiscal year.
In April, the company signed a long-term agreement with Google to develop and supply future generations of Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) and networking technology through 2031, according to Reuters. That agreement expanded a relationship that has already produced multiple generations of Google's custom AI chips.
The same month, Anthropic expanded its use of Google Cloud and TPU infrastructure.
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