Broadcom CEO Hock Tan Stands by $230 Billion AI Revenue Target Despite Anthropic Slowdown Fears

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan on Monday dismissed investor concerns stemming from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's call to moderate the pace of frontier AI development, telling CNBC that the chipmaker's long-term revenue targets remain unchanged.

Shares of Broadcom fell 4.8% during Monday's session after Amodei's weekend essay circulated widely among AI infrastructure investors. The iShares Semiconductor ETF dropped 5.6%, and stocks of other data-center component suppliers were also hit.

Amodei's essay proposed a three-step plan to slow the pace of AI model development without, in his words, "sacrificing commercial advantage or the United States' lead in AI." His position drew public support from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk, amplifying its market impact.

Tan pushed back directly during an appearance on CNBC's "Mad Money." "No, not in the least," Tan said when host Jim Cramer asked whether the slowdown debate had caused him to reconsider Broadcom's fiscal 2027 and 2028 AI semiconductor forecasts. "We see the demand for compute infrastructure, for AI development or AI frontier models, and inference for the products that they feed to the world, as continuing to be very strong and, I believe, very durable."

On Broadcom's fiscal 2026 third-quarter earnings call on September 2, Tan had forecast AI semiconductor revenue of $115 billion in fiscal 2027, before doubling to $230 billion in fiscal 2028.

Anthropic sits at the center of Broadcom's growth story. Tan confirmed that Anthropic is on track to become Broadcom's largest custom chip customer in 2027 and hold that position through 2028 — a dynamic that makes investors particularly sensitive to any signal from Amodei about the pace of AI spending. Google has historically held the top spot, co-designing its tensor processing units with Broadcom.

Tan expressed particular optimism about inference demand, the segment of AI compute tied to deploying trained models for everyday use. "I don't know about training, but when you want to productize inference, I see it continuing to be very, very strong," he said.

Broadcom's AI revenue spans both custom AI accelerators and networking chips used inside AI systems.

While Tan aligned with Amodei on the need for guardrails around the technology, he characterized AI as fundamentally a tool rather than an autonomous force. "Like any tool, it's important to put governances, safeguards on how we use the tool," he told Cramer. "It's not a live animal that will run wild by itself."

Tan likened AI's economic impact to the Industrial Revolution, which originated in 18th-century England. "AI, generative AI, the creation of those frontier models ... will create huge value," he said.

The exchange underscores a widening tension between the AI safety community, which is pushing for slower development, and the infrastructure suppliers whose revenue projections depend on continued acceleration in compute spending. Tan's remarks signal that, at least for now, Broadcom is betting the demand curve does not bend.

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