Broadcom's Power-Shield Status and Private-Credit Push Keep the AI Story Intact

Morgan Stanley flags Broadcom and Nvidia as relatively insulated from US data center power constraints; Broadcom negotiates over $50B in AI chip financing.

Morgan Stanley handed Broadcom and Nvidia a rare distinction on Monday: both were flagged as relatively well insulated from the power bottlenecks now squeezing US data centers. The call, first reported by Reuters, lands at a moment when the semiconductor sector is nervously recalibrating how much electricity — not how much silicon — will decide the pace of AI expansion.

Broadcom's shares were quoted at EUR 330.90 during the session, a modest daily decline of 1.6%. A separate reading put the stock at EUR 332.80, down 1.1%, as broader tech sentiment softened. Over the trailing seven days, however, the equity is still up 8.2%, a reminder that investors have been rewarding the company's recent strategic moves even as the tape cools.

Not Every Supplier Shares the Same Exposure

The Morgan Stanley assessment draws a line through the supply chain rather than painting it with one brush. Delays in building out AI infrastructure are expected to hit makers of memory components, optical systems and other discrete parts hardest. Broadcom, by contrast, enjoys something closer to a shield, thanks to its deep position in custom accelerators — a foothold that gives it a steadier footing than plain-vanilla component vendors and keeps the foundation for its large ongoing projects intact.

A Financing Machine Built on Private Credit

Running alongside that chip narrative is an increasingly elaborate capital structure. Broadcom has been negotiating to arrange more than $50 billion to fund bespoke AI chips co-developed with OpenAI, with asset managers Apollo Global Management and Blackstone among the potential lenders in early-stage talks. The figure is preliminary and could shift as discussions progress.

The arrangement illustrates how chip designers and institutional creditors are becoming entwined. Rather than carrying the full weight of enormous hardware investments on their own balance sheets, partners are leaning more heavily on private equity and debt.

That playbook already has precedent. Roughly a week ago, Anthropic's prospectus disclosed that Broadcom had committed up to $42 billion in credit to the AI developer for infrastructure spending. Those convertible notes back a $125.2 billion obligation Anthropic took on through a five-year lease for TPU capacity. On top of that, a financing syndicate assembled about $60 billion for AI chips, benefiting Anthropic and other firms. According to Bloomberg, the package includes a $42 billion senior secured tranche, with Broadcom providing residual-value support.

VMware Channel Changes Still Draw Fire

On the software side, Laura Falko defended the revamped VMware partner program in an interview on Monday, saying Broadcom had laid out clear criteria for partners to remain in the program. Industry debate shows no sign of dying down. Partners and enterprise customers alike have voiced reservations about higher renewal costs and a narrowing pool of service providers.

The reworked distribution network has strained ties with many long-standing partners, with criticism centered on altered terms and strict entry hurdles. Broadcom insists its new rules be followed, while market participants warn of lingering uncertainty among customers, who face steeper software license bills and fear losing familiar caretakers of their IT infrastructure.

Marvell's Forecast and a Choppy Tape

A read-across for the chip sector came from rival Marvell Technology, which projected roughly $20 billion in revenue for fiscal 2028 and sized the addressable market at $400 billion by 2030. Investors took that outlook as evidence that demand for custom AI chips remains robust.

Weighing on the group more recently has been the wider backdrop: rising US Treasury yields and climbing oil prices have stoked risk aversion across technology, capping gains in broad swaths of the market.