Broadcom Inc. is an American multinational designer, developer, manufacturer, and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products.

Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wireless, storage, and industrial markets.

[12][17] Avago Technologies announced its agreement to acquire CyOptics, an optical chip and component supplier, for $400 million in April 2013.

[11][21][17][22][23] The acquisition helped move Avago Technologies away from specialized products and towards a more mainstream industry, which included chips, especially storage for data centers.

[27] In February 2015, it was announced that Avago Technologies Limited had reached an agreement to acquire Emulex Corporation for $8 per share in cash.

[31] Broadcom Corp. strengthened Avago Technologies' patent position significantly in sectors such as mobile, the data center, and the Internet of Things and made the company the ninth largest holder of patents among the top semiconductor vendors, according to an analysis by technology consulting firm LexInnova.

[38] The proposed hostile takeover, which was later revised to $117 billion, was blocked by the Trump administration by an executive order that cited national security concerns.

"While the United States remains dominant in the standards-setting space currently, China would likely compete robustly to fill any void left by Qualcomm as a result of this hostile takeover.

[42] Observers have stated that President Trump's decision was as consistent with the balance of trade objectives as it was with security concerns.

[40] Historically a semiconductor-based-only company,[45] the failure of the Qualcomm bid led Broadcom and its CEO to look at acquiring infrastructure software as an alternative way of growing in size.

[48] On 9 August 2019, news sources reported that Broadcom had decided to acquire the enterprise security business of Symantec Corporation (the consumer software portion of which is now known as Gen Digital) for $10.7 billion in cash.

[7] In 2021, Broadcom agreed to settle the antitrust complaint which claimed it had abused its monopoly power through restrictive contract terms and threats of retaliation against non-compliant customers.

[61] Critics have argued that Broadcom is suing Netflix for being more successful,[62] citing the declining number of traditional pay television subscribers due to the rise of streaming services.

[63] The Leichtman Research Group calculated that the largest pay TV providers in the U.S. – representing about 95% of the market – lost about 4,915,000 net video subscribers in 2019.

[69][70] The European Commission also said it was investigating the proposed acquisition, and as a result, Broadcom and VMware extended the planned completion date out to May 26, 2023.

This acquisition, one of the largest in the technology sector, received global regulatory scrutiny, including from China, which approved the deal with specific conditions.

[75] On completion, CEO Hock Tan announced that the company would relocate its headquarters in San Jose to the VMware campus in Palo Alto.

[76][77] In February 2024, Broadcom sold the end-user computing division, which it inherited from the VMware acquisition, to KKR for $4 billion.

Common applications for its products include: data center networking, home connectivity, broadband access, telecommunications equipment, smartphones, base stations, data center servers and storage, factory automation, power generation and alternative energy systems, displays, and mainframe operations and management, and application software development.

For example, select Dell PowerEdge blade servers have Broadcom-powered Ethernet port adapters as an add-in card.

In April 2017, Google's Project Zero investigated Broadcom's SoC WiFi stack and found that it lacked "all basic exploit mitigations - including stack cookies, safe unlinking and access permission protection," allowing "full device takeover by Wi-Fi proximity alone, requiring no user interaction.