New York, February 23, 2026, 10:59 (ET) — Regular session
Broadcom Inc. (AVGO) ticked up roughly 0.4% to $333.83 by late morning Monday. Shares bounced between $328.18 and $338.39 earlier, starting the session at $332.51. Around 4.2 million shares had changed hands.
It’s a modest shift, yet the timing couldn’t be worse. Chip stocks are still searching for stable ground, with Broadcom right up against the pressure points—data-center spending, telecom capex, enterprise software budgets.
Broadcom shares are getting tugged by both the political headlines and big AI hardware moves. U.S. stocks slipped after President Donald Trump rolled out a fresh 15% global tariff, following a Supreme Court decision on Friday that wiped out most of his previous tariffs. “You simply can’t bet against Trump. He wants tariffs, and he’s going to find a way to implement them,” said Thomas Hayes, chairman at Great Hill Capital LLC. Nvidia ticked higher ahead of its quarterly results, slated for Wednesday, according to Reuters. (Reuters)
Investors are circling the same uncertainties with Broadcom: Will cloud clients keep pouring money into AI infrastructure? Can networking silicon keep expanding if budgets tighten? There’s little tolerance these days for any missteps.
The software angle complicates things further. Broadcom’s infrastructure software business, anchored by VMware, ropes the company even closer to corporate IT spending cycles—renewals and pricing matter here just as much as moving chips does.
Broadcom rolled out its BroadPeak chip last week, pitching the radio digital front-end SoC at 5G Advanced and early 6G wireless equipment. The company says BroadPeak is designed for massive MIMO—those hefty antenna arrays that boost network capacity—and claims it can slash power consumption by as much as 40% compared to current options. “The BroadPeak SoC … [delivers] up to 40% greater efficiency for next-generation base stations,” according to Vijay Janapaty, vice president and general manager of Broadcom’s Physical Layer Products Division. (GlobeNewswire)
The upside story looks pretty thin—has before, too. Back in December, Broadcom flagged that ramping up sales of custom AI chips, which carry slimmer margins, was putting pressure on profits. It’s a reality check: more AI revenue doesn’t automatically pad the bottom line. “Right now, the spending intentions still seem so big by so many, hitting that panic button is premature,” said Ben Reitzes, analyst at Melius Research. (Reuters)
Tariffs just pile on more uncertainty, particularly for hardware supply chains and customers making large, cyclical purchases. With policy details still unclear, traders often react quickly now and figure out the details afterward.
Next up for AVGO: earnings. Broadcom will release its fiscal 2026 first-quarter numbers on March 4 after the bell, with the conference call set for 5 p.m. ET. (Stock Titan)
