Broadcom Maintains AI Revenue Targets Despite Anthropic Slowdown Call

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan has affirmed that the company's AI revenue targets remain unchanged despite a high-profile push to slow AI development. The insistence comes as the industry grapples with a tension between explosive commercial expansion and urgent safety concerns.

The stability of Broadcom's outlook follows a global rout in semiconductor stocks on September 14, 2026. The market volatility was triggered by a call for a development slowdown led by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. Despite this, Tan maintains that demand for AI infrastructure, specifically networking and custom accelerators, remains robust.

The Growth Trajectory

Broadcom is reporting massive acceleration in its AI semiconductor segment. In the third quarter of 2026, the company saw AI semiconductor revenue grow 221% year-on-year to $16.7 billion. Looking ahead, Broadcom expects fiscal 2026 AI semiconductor revenue to reach $58 billion, marking a 186% increase over the previous year.

Tan has set even more aggressive targets for the coming years. "In 2027, we have secured the supply to again double AI revenue to approximately $115 billion," Tan stated. He further projected that AI revenue could potentially reach $230 billion by 2028.

Infrastructure vs. Model Pace

This confidence exists alongside the rapid scaling of AI labs. Anthropic, a key partner for Broadcom, has seen its annual revenue run rate cross $30 billion as of April 2026, a significant jump from the roughly $9 billion reported at the close of 2025. Broadcom serves as a critical physical layer for these entities, providing custom XPUs and networking hardware to hyperscalers and labs.

The current industry climate is defined by a paradox: while leadership at firms like Anthropic calls for a slowdown to implement better safeguards, these same companies are pursuing massive valuations and imminent IPOs. Broadcom's position suggests that the build-out of the physical layer—the chips and cables—is decoupled from the pace of frontier model release cycles.

Market Implications

Broadcom's refusal to lower its guidance serves as a counter-narrative to fears of an "AI bubble." If these projections hold, it indicates that the demand for capacity is an independent force, as companies continue to build out infrastructure regardless of whether the deployment of new models is accelerated or throttled for safety.

What to Watch

Investors will be monitoring whether the September market rout was a temporary reaction to safety rhetoric or the start of a broader correction. While Broadcom's current quarterly growth is concrete, the realization of the $230 billion target by 2028 depends on the continued appetite of hyperscalers to expand their hardware footprints amidst evolving regulatory and safety pressures.