- Broadcom is rumored to have an ongoing partnership with Apple to help it build its own AI chip.
- TikTok’s parent company ByteDance OpenAI is also reportedly in the picture
- The move comes as hyperscalers look to reduce their reliance on Nvidia’s AI chips.
Nvidia has harnessed the rise of generative AI to record revenue and profits over the past two years, and while it remains far ahead of its competitors, the company is facing increasing pressure, not just from its rival. AMD but also hyperscalers that have traditionally relied on Nvidia GPUs, but are now looking to reduce their dependence on their hardware.
As The next platform points out: “Nvidia’s biggest problem is that its largest customers have IT expenses large enough that they can compete with Nvidia and AMD and design their own XPUs for serial and parallel computing. And when they do, it will be chip design and manufacturing houses Broadcom and Marvell, which have extensive experience running chips through Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co foundries, that will benefit.”
In its most recent earnings call, Hock Tan, president and CEO of Broadcom, told investors: “Specific hyperscalers have begun their respective journeys to develop their own AI accelerators or custom XPUs, as well as to network these XPUs with open and scalable Ethernet connectivity. . As you know, we currently have three hyperscale customers who have developed their own multi-generational AI XPU roadmap to deploy at different paces over the next three years. In 2027, we believe they each plan to deploy one million XPU clusters on a single fabric.”
Getting your fair share
Without naming specific companies, Tan added: “To compound this, we have been selected by two additional hyperscalers and are in advanced development for their own next-generation AI XPUs.”
Broadcom is widely believed to be working with Google and Meta and, as we previously reported, ByteDance and OpenAI on custom AI chips.
Apple is also believed to be developing its first AI server chip, codenamed “Baltra,” and that Broadcom will provide the advanced networking technologies essential for AI processing.
During the question and answer portion of the earnings call, when Tan was asked about market share, he responded: “All we are going to do is earn our fair share. We are very well positioned today, we have the best technology, very relevant in this space. We have by far one of the best combined technologies out there for creating XPUs and connecting those XPUs. We have plenty of the silicon technology that allows this here at Broadcom, so we are very well positioned with these three clients of ours.”
