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. TipRanks
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.
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. Reuters
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.
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