Broadcom’s AI Boom: Hock Tan Earns Comparisons to Steve Jobs

The AI wave is reshaping the semiconductor industry, and Broadcom (AVGO) is now firmly at the center of that story. The company’s latest earnings report not only stunned Wall Street but also positioned its CEO, Hock Tan, among the most memorable figures in tech leadership – some analysts even compared his presence on the earnings call to the legendary Steve Jobs.

Broadcom reported an impressive 22% year-over-year revenue increase for fiscal Q3 2025, reaching $15.95 billion and comfortably beating analyst estimates of $15.83 billion.

Earnings per share also surprised to the upside, hitting $1.69. These numbers aren’t just strong – they underscore how aggressively Broadcom has pivoted into artificial intelligence hardware, a space that is exploding in demand.

The company has rolled out cutting-edge products this year, including the Tomahawk Ultra, an Ethernet switch chip tailored for data center interconnects, and the next-generation Jericho networking chip, a router specifically designed for massive distributed AI clusters. These chips are critical because AI isn’t just about raw compute; it’s also about moving data efficiently at scale, and Broadcom is proving it can engineer for both needs.

Broadcom’s AI semiconductor revenue alone surged 63% year-over-year to $5.2 billion, a figure that dwarfs the AI efforts of many rivals. And the momentum isn’t slowing down. For Q4, the company raised its guidance to $17.4 billion in total revenue, with AI semiconductor sales expected to contribute $6.2 billion. The scale of this guidance is one reason Ben Reitzes of Melius Research described the earnings call as “the most bullish and memorable” of his career, promptly hiking his price target for AVGO shares to $415.

The bigger story lies beyond this quarter. According to the Financial Times, OpenAI is reportedly weighing a $10 billion investment into designing an AI accelerator with Broadcom as soon as next year. Tan confirmed during the earnings call that Broadcom has already secured a new $10 billion custom silicon contract, a deal that appears to align with these reports. Goldman Sachs analysts added fuel to the optimism by noting that Broadcom’s addition of a new inference-focused silicon customer could materially accelerate the company’s AI revenue trajectory into 2026, potentially pushing growth rates beyond the 60% previously anticipated.

While the market often gets caught up in the hype cycles of AI, Broadcom’s disciplined execution stands out. Unlike firms chasing flashy demos or speculative AI applications, Tan’s company is quietly building the backbone – ASICs, accelerators, and networking infrastructure – that makes the entire ecosystem possible. Some commentators joked that instead of asking if AI could design chips, perhaps we should acknowledge that chips like Broadcom’s are what make real-world AI achievable at scale.

For investors, the lesson is clear: Broadcom has transitioned from being a well-regarded semiconductor player to a cornerstone of the AI hardware boom. And with contracts of unprecedented size, surging revenue streams, and products already deployed in hyperscale environments, Hock Tan is steering his company into a league where comparisons to Steve Jobs don’t feel exaggerated – they feel earned.