New York, January 30, 2026, 10:43 (EST) — Regular session
- Broadcom shares rose roughly 0.3% mid-morning, standing out amid a wider slump in chip stocks
- Wolfe Research has upgraded AVGO to Outperform, assigning a $400 price target amid Google’s TPU scale-up
- Broadcom’s upcoming earnings report is due after the close on March 4
Shares of Broadcom Inc. ticked up roughly 0.3% to $331.71 in mid-morning trading on Friday. Wolfe Research upgraded the stock to Outperform, assigning a $400 price target. Analyst Chris Caso noted in a summary, “we can no longer ignore” Broadcom’s growth and strength in Google’s tensor processing units. 1
Timing is crucial as investors wrestle with distinguishing signal from noise in the custom AI chip market, where demand often depends on just a few clients and major product cycles. Even a straightforward upgrade can shift the tape, despite little movement in the stock itself.
Broadcom bucked the trend. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF slipped roughly 1.7%, the Nasdaq-100 tracker QQQ dropped about 0.7%, and the SPDR S&P 500 ETF edged down close to 0.3%.
Wolfe’s checks with suppliers and customers indicate Google’s TPU shipments could hit around 7 million units annually by 2028. The firm highlighted that Google opening its TPUs to external clients might provide serious competition to Nvidia’s GPUs. Broadcom is seen as poised to grab a sizable chunk of the custom silicon market. Wolfe also boosted its AI ASIC revenue forecast for Broadcom to roughly $44 billion in 2026 and $78.4 billion in 2027, the report said. 2
TPU stands for tensor processing unit, Google’s custom chip designed specifically for training and running AI models. ASIC, or application-specific integrated circuit, refers to a chip tailored for a specific task or client, unlike a general-purpose processor.
The day showed a sharp divide. Nvidia slipped roughly 0.3%, while Advanced Micro Devices tumbled nearly 3.9% during that period.
Broadcom’s AI-driven growth has delivered mixed signals to investors. Back in December, the company projected strong quarterly revenue, fueled by robust demand for its AI chips. Yet shares slipped in after-hours trading when CFO Kirsten Spears cautioned that gross margins would shrink by “about 100 basis points” sequentially. 3
The market’s still caught in that tug-of-war. Bulls are hunting for proof that orders are expanding past just a handful of hyperscalers and that networking demand is tracking the compute expansion. Skeptics, meanwhile, keep circling back to worries over mix-driven margin pressure and the chance customers might hit pause.
The sector faces a straightforward concentration risk. Should TPU rollouts delay, cloud clients extend their spending cycles, or rivals alter the pace of custom-chip victories, price targets won’t last. This space tends to reprice fast.
Broadcom announced during its last earnings call it will release first-quarter fiscal 2026 results after markets close on Wednesday, March 4. Investors will focus on any news about AI-related orders, customer ramp-ups, and whether the company revises its margin outlook. 4
