Broadcom’s Anthropic Ramp Puts Google’s TPU Business in a Different Light

Broadcom's September 2 results show custom AI hardware turning into substantial sales. On the accompanying call, management said it expected to accelerate Ironwood shipments to Anthropic in the fourth quarter. That puts Google's TPU technology at the center of a relationship whose economics differ for Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) and Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL). Broadcom can sell custom accelerators and networking components. Alphabet can strengthen an alternative computing platform and its cloud offering. However, demand for Google-designed chips does not automatically establish how much revenue or profit Alphabet receives from every deployment.