Broadcom CEO reaffirms aggressive revenue growth targets driven by AI custom silicon and networking demand.

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan is firmly rejecting concerns that calls for moderating frontier AI development could undermine the chipmaker's growth trajectory. Despite Broadcom shares falling 4.8% following recent industry anxiety, Tan remains committed to the company's aggressive fiscal 2027 and 2028 AI semiconductor revenue forecasts. His confidence rests on a crucial distinction: even if the pace of training advanced models slows, the computing infrastructure required to deploy and run AI products in production could sustain enormous demand.

Broadcom designs custom AI accelerators, networking chips, and other semiconductor infrastructure while operating VMware. As hyperscalers increasingly build specialized systems optimized for specific AI workloads, Broadcom's custom-silicon business has emerged as a critical alternative to general-purpose GPUs. When pressed on whether the emerging AI slowdown debate had altered Broadcom's forecasts, Tan was unequivocal. "No, not in the least," he said. "We see the demand for compute infrastructure, for AI development or AI frontier models, and inference for the products that they feed to the world, as continuing to be very strong and, I believe, very durable."

This reassurance comes after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for moderating frontier-model development, triggering a sharp selloff across AI infrastructure stocks. Beyond Broadcom's 4.8% decline, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped nearly 6%. The market reaction carries particular weight because Anthropic is expected to become Broadcom's largest custom-chip customer in 2027 and remain so in 2028, surpassing Google, historically among Broadcom's most significant custom-silicon customers.

Tan expressed particular optimism about inference. "I don't know about training, but when you want to productize inference, I see it continuing to be very, very strong," he said. Broadcom's recent financial results support this confidence. Third-quarter revenue surged 86% to $29.6 billion, with AI chip sales reaching $16.7 billion. The company now projects AI semiconductor revenue approaching $115 billion in fiscal 2027 and roughly $230 billion in 2028.

For the fourth quarter, Broadcom expects revenue around $34.8 billion, with non-GAAP operating income projected at approximately 66% of revenue. The critical question for investors is whether inference demand becomes substantial enough to offset any moderation in frontier-model training. If inference spending accelerates as Tan predicts, Monday's selloff may prove disconnected from Broadcom's underlying demand drivers. However, any pullback in customer infrastructure commitments—particularly from Anthropic—would directly challenge the assumptions underlying Tan's long-term targets.