Inside Broadcom’s Bold Move to Boost Demand for Its Chips

When Broadcom last week announced a funding venture with Apollo and Blackstone to pay for a gigawatt of computing capacity to be used by Anthropic, it looked like the latest in a series of AI computing deals funded by private equity. Behind the scenes, however, the deal represents a risky move by Broadcom to boost demand for its chips.

While the announcement didn’t spell out Broadcom’s role, the company—which works with tech firms such as Google to design their AI chips—is providing a key financial backstop for the $35 billion order of chips. In doing so, it is following in the footsteps of Nvidia, which has employed similar vendor financing techniques to accelerate its own chip sales. But Broadcom doesn’t have Nvidia’s deep pockets, making it a bigger gamble.