Broadcom Stock Down 24% Despite Record AI Growth, Jalapeño Chip Launch

Broadcom's growth trajectory in AI semiconductors is striking by any standard. The company is scaling from $10.8 billion（約1.7兆円） in Q2 AI revenue to guidance of $16.0 billion（約2.6兆円） just one quarter out—a more than 200% year-over-year jump—while companywide revenue is guided to grow 84%. For a company of Broadcom's size, these growth rates have almost no precedent outside the AI build-out itself. Yet the stock's 24% discount from its 52-week high reflects a specific structural concern: the business increasingly depends on a handful of giant customers. If any of those six anchor customers materially cuts spending, or if the overall AI trade reprices, Broadcom's multiple and growth could contract sharply.

The Jalapeño launch illustrates the logic of that customer concentration. Broadcom and OpenAI jointly engineered an inference processor (the step where an AI produces an answer) tailored to OpenAI's workload. The chip is cheaper for OpenAI to run than buying off-the-shelf graphics processors—which is why custom silicon appeals to hyperscalers—but that same cost advantage limits how much Broadcom can charge. As more AI workloads move to application-specific chips, the market expands, yet sellers' pricing power shrinks. The article notes this is arguably the fastest-growing niche in semiconductors, precisely because customers see a clear economic win, but it is not a market where Broadcom can command premium margins indefinitely.