Broadcom Inc.
Market Data Current As Of: September 12, 2026
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Broadcom Inc.
Compare market positioning with top industry peers
Explore Broadcom
Core profile pages, annual revenue records, and related research hubs for this company.
Company History
Founded 1991 in San Jose, California
Broadcom Corporation was founded in 1991 by Henry Samueli and Henry Nicholas III out of UCLA, initially focused on broadband communication semiconductors. The IPO came in 1998 at the peak of the networking boom, and the stock became one of the defining stories of the dot-com era. Then came the crash, the stock options backdating scandal of 2006, and the eventual departure of the founders. Meanwhile, a separate entity called Avago Technologies was spun out of Hewlett-Packard's semiconductor division in 2005, backed by private equity. Hock Tan took over as Avago's CEO in 2006 and immediately began applying an acquisition strategy that would define the company's next two decades: identify businesses with essential technology, dominant market positions, and recurring maintenance revenue, then acquire them and optimize. Avago went public in 2009 and began acquiring: LSI Corporation for $6.6 billion in 2014, adding storage controllers and networking chips. Then the audacious 2016 purchase of Broadcom Corporation itself for $37 billion — Avago bought a company nearly its own size and took the Broadcom name. The combined entity's 2018 attempt to acquire Qualcomm in a hostile $117 billion deal was blocked by presidential order on national security grounds, one of the few times the strategy encountered an immovable obstacle. The CA Technologies acquisition in 2018 and the Symantec enterprise security division purchase in 2019 were the pivots that clarified the dual-engine model: semiconductor excellence combined with enterprise software recurring revenue. VMware in 2023 extended that model to its logical maximum.
Broadcom's founding history is convoluted, as the modern entity is actually the product of a reverse-takeover by a different company (Avago Technologies). The original Broadcom Corporation was founded in 1991 in Los Angeles by two brilliant UCLA engineering professors: Henry Nicholas and Henry Samueli. Nicholas and Samueli recognized that the nascent boom in internet and broadband communications would require a new generation of specialized, efficient microchips. They possessed a staggering $5,000 of initial capital. Operating out of a small condominium, they focused heavily on combining complex analog and digital functions onto a single silicon chip (a technical challenge at the time). Their chips became the foundational architecture for the explosion of cable modems and set-top boxes in the late 1990s. Broadcom executed an IPO during the dot-com boom, making the founders billionaires, though Nicholas was later ousted amidst personal scandals. The true architect of the modern Broadcom, however, is Hock Tan, the CEO of Avago Technologies. Avago itself was a spin-off from Hewlett-Packard's semiconductor division. Tan is a brilliant, Malaysian-born engineer with a MBA from Harvard. Unlike the traditional visionary founders of Silicon Valley who obsess over product innovation, Tan operates entirely as a ruthless financial engineer. In 2015, Tan's smaller company, Avago, audaciously acquired the much larger Broadcom for $37 billion. Tan retained the more prestigious 'Broadcom' name for the combined entity but immediately installed his draconian, centralized management philosophy, purging underperforming divisions and transforming the company into the most acquisitive and profitable roll-up machine in the history of the technology industry.
Henry Nicholas III co-founded Broadcom Corporation alongside Henry Samueli in 1991, contributing the startup's initial capital from his personal savings and serving as the company's first President and CEO. Under his leadership, Broadcom developed the DOCSIS cable modem chips that established its market position, went public in 1998 at a valuation that made both founders billionaires, and pursued an aggressive acquisition strategy during the dot-com era that built a broad networking and communications semiconductor portfolio. Nicholas's tenure also encompassed the period of corporate governance controversy that ultimately led to the stock options backdating investigation. He resigned from Broadcom in 2003. Federal charges against him, including securities fraud related to the options scandal and separate drug-related charges, resulted in a complex legal process that ended with his acquittal on most counts in 2009. Nicholas has subsequently been involved in philanthropy, including advocacy for traumatic brain injury awareness. His connection to the company that carries the Broadcom name today is historical rather than operational.
Henry Samueli and Henry Nicholas III incorporate Broadcom Corporation in Los Angeles, California, with $5,000 in seed capital, targeting the emerging cable modem semiconductor market.
Broadcom Corporation completes its initial public offering on Nasdaq at $24 per share, raising approximately $126 million and establishing the company as a public Silicon Valley semiconductor firm.
KKR and Silver Lake Partners acquire the semiconductor components division of Agilent Technologies for approximately $2.66 billion and establish it as Avago Technologies, an independent company that becomes the corporate predecessor of the modern Broadcom Inc.
Hock Tan is recruited as President and CEO of Avago Technologies, beginning the disciplined acquisition-and-optimization strategy that will eventually transform the company into one of the world's most valuable technology enterprises.
Avago Technologies completes its IPO on Nasdaq, raising approximately $1.04 billion at a valuation of roughly $3 billion, providing the public market currency that will fuel future acquisitions.
Avago Technologies acquires LSI Corporation — a maker of storage and networking semiconductor chips — for approximately $6.6 billion, significantly expanding its addressable market in enterprise data storage and fiber channel networking.
Avago Technologies completes the acquisition of Broadcom Corporation for approximately $37 billion in cash and stock — the largest semiconductor deal in history at that time — and adopts the Broadcom name and AVGO ticker, creating the foundation of the modern company.
Broadcom acquires CA Technologies, a diversified enterprise software company with mainframe and DevOps tools, for approximately $18.9 billion, marking its first major move into enterprise software and establishing the infrastructure software segment.
Broadcom acquires the enterprise security business of Symantec Corporation for approximately $10.7 billion, adding cybersecurity software including data loss prevention, web security gateway, and endpoint protection to its growing software portfolio.
Broadcom announces its agreement to acquire VMware, Inc. For approximately $61 billion in cash and stock at announcement, in what would become the largest technology acquisition in history upon closing.
After obtaining regulatory approvals across multiple jurisdictions including the United States, European Union, United Kingdom, and China, Broadcom completes the acquisition of VMware on November 22, 2023, for a total transaction value of approximately $69 billion including assumed debt, adding the world's leading enterprise virtualization platform to its portfolio.
Broadcom reports fiscal year 2024 revenue of approximately $51.57 billion, a 44 percent increase, and discloses that AI semiconductor revenue reached approximately $12.2 billion while guiding for $60-90 billion in AI XPU revenue from its top three hyperscaler customers over FY2025-2026, establishing itself as a central player in the AI infrastructure buildout.
In fiscal 2025 Broadcom reported $63.887B in revenue, $23.126B in net income, $25.484B in operating income, and rapid AI semiconductor growth.
Avago Technologies acquired LSI Corporation in May 2014 for approximately $6.6 billion to gain its portfolio of storage semiconductor products — particularly fiber channel and SAS/SATA RAID controllers — and its networking ASIC business. LSI was the leading supplier of host bus adapters for enterprise storage area networks and had a significant server RAID controller business serving major OEMs including Dell, HP, and IBM. The acquisition also brought Sandforce, LSI's flash storage controller business, providing exposure to the emerging enterprise SSD market.
Avago Technologies' acquisition of Broadcom Corporation for approximately $37 billion was transformational — it was the largest semiconductor deal in history at the time and brought Avago the dominant franchise in data center ethernet switching silicon (the Tomahawk and Trident product lines), a leading broadband access chip business, and a well-established brand name in semiconductor networking that carried significant recognition among enterprise and hyperscale customers. The acquisition was motivated by Hock Tan's conviction that networking silicon at the hyperscale data center layer was the most important and financially attractive semiconductor segment for the coming decade.
Broadcom's acquisition of CA Technologies in November 2018 for approximately $18.9 billion represented the company's first major move into enterprise software and was initially met with skepticism from investors who questioned what a semiconductor company would do with a mainframe software business. The rationale was straightforward in Tan's framework: CA Technologies had an installed base of enterprise customers with extremely high switching costs, a product portfolio that had been under-invested in for years, a cost structure that could be reduced, and a revenue base that was structurally recurring even under perpetual license terms due to mandatory maintenance contracts.
Broadcom acquired the enterprise security business of Symantec Corporation for approximately $10.7 billion in November 2019, adding endpoint security, data loss prevention, web security gateway, and cloud security services to its infrastructure software portfolio. The acquisition was motivated by the defensibility and entrenchment of Symantec's enterprise customer relationships in regulated industries — financial services, healthcare, and government — where security software removal triggers compliance reviews and represents significant operational risk.
Broadcom's acquisition of VMware, completed November 22, 2023, for approximately $69 billion including assumed debt, was the largest technology acquisition in history and the defining transaction of Hock Tan's tenure. VMware's approximately 33,000 enterprise customers running its vSphere, NSX, and vSAN virtualization platform had some of the highest switching costs in enterprise technology — replacing VMware in a large enterprise data center environment is a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar undertaking. The acquisition was designed to add a defensible software recurring revenue stream to Broadcom's semiconductor cashflows, creating a company that could sustain high margins across semiconductor cycles.
Since its establishment in 1991, Broadcom Inc. expanded from an early-stage venture into a recognized leader in Semiconductors & Enterprise Software, overcoming key market challenges.
Over its history, Broadcom Inc. executed decisive strategic pivots toward scalable monetization and digital distribution, securing its current market leadership.
By continually modernizing operations and embracing workflow automation, Broadcom Inc. maintains resilience through changing technological and economic cycles.