Broadcom's AI Chip Sales Alone Top Intel's Entire Quarterly Revenue

Broadcom reported fiscal third-quarter revenue of $29.6 billion for the quarter ended August 2, 2026, up 86% year over year, according to a PR Newswire release cited by Ad-Hoc-News. AI semiconductor revenue hit $16.7 billion, up 221% from the prior-year quarter and 54% sequentially, making up 56% of total sales.

That single AI segment, $16.7 billion, beat Intel's entire fiscal second-quarter revenue of $16.1 billion for the period ended June 27, 2026, a figure Intel reported and The Motley Fool compiled into its quarterly revenue comparison. Intel's total revenue grew 25% year over year. Broadcom's AI business alone grew nearly nine times faster.

The profitability numbers back up the growth story. Broadcom's GAAP operating income rose to $16.0 billion from $5.9 billion a year earlier, according to Ad-Hoc-News. Non-GAAP operating income reached $20.1 billion, up 92%. GAAP diluted EPS came in at $2.68, versus $0.85 in the same quarter last year. Free cash flow hit $13.7 billion, or 46% of revenue, and the board approved a quarterly dividend of $0.65 per share.

Broadcom isn't slowing guidance either. For fiscal Q4 2026, the company projects revenue of approximately $34.8 billion, up 93% year over year, with AI semiconductor revenue of $21.7 billion, up 236%. Full-year fiscal 2026 AI revenue guidance was raised to $58 billion. Management's longer-range targets call for roughly $115 billion in AI revenue in fiscal 2027 and about $230 billion in fiscal 2028, according to figures reported by Crypto Briefing and Pluang.

Those numbers rest on named customers: Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic, according to Crypto Briefing. Anthropic is expected to become Broadcom's largest customer for its custom XPU accelerators by 2027. Broadcom also recently struck a deal with OpenAI to co-design an AI processor and signed a long-term cloud migration agreement with Standard Chartered, per The Motley Fool.

The market's pushback

Not everyone is convinced the stock has room left to run at current levels. Shares traded at $350.10 around midday on September 28, down about 0.7% that session, according to TradingView, which pointed out that figure sits roughly 15% below GuruFocus' $414.21 GF Value estimate. On the Lang & Schwarz exchange, Broadcom shares closed at €310.73 on September 29, up 1.2% from the prior session, Ad-Hoc-News reported.

A Seeking Alpha analysis published October 1 kept a buy rating on Broadcom, citing a forward P/E that has contracted to 29.85 even as the company's adjusted EPS grew 96%. But that same analysis flagged two specific risks worth taking seriously: tariff uncertainty and what it called "circular financing," specifically pointing to the Anthropic arrangement.

The circular-financing concern, raised across AI infrastructure coverage generally, is that chipmakers, cloud providers, and AI labs are increasingly each other's biggest customers and sometimes investors, which can inflate reported demand if any one link in that chain stumbles. Broadcom's own numbers, record free cash flow, a near doubling of operating income, and guidance that's already proven conservative in recent quarters according to Ad-Hoc-News, suggest real chips are shipping and real cash is coming in the door right now. But the $115 billion fiscal 2027 and $230 billion fiscal 2028 figures are management's own forecasts, not audited results, and they assume current customer commitments convert into actual deliveries at the pace promised.

Intel's turnaround, in context

Intel's story is improvement, not explosion. Its Data Center and AI segment grew 59% to $6.3 billion in the quarter, and non-GAAP gross margin improved to about 41.8%, with foundry losses narrowing, according to Crypto Briefing. CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who took over in 2025, gets credit from The Motley Fool for steering the company out of several flat years, visible in Intel's own quarterly revenue trail from $12.7 billion in the March 2025 quarter up to $16.1 billion a year later.

Intel's stock has also rallied hard, closing recently at $119.33, but Simply Wall St's discounted cash flow model suggests the shares could be roughly 50% overvalued against the company's underlying cash generation, noting Intel's trailing twelve-month free cash flow is still negative, about $4.8 billion. Simply Wall St ties the rally partly to Meta's Muse AI rollout and surging CPU demand, and lays out a bull case of 76% undervalued against a bear case of roughly fair value, reflecting a real split among analysts.

Intel also cut jobs within its data center group this year and struck a security-chip partnership with Fortinet, moves The Motley Fool frames as efficiency plays rather than growth bets.

Broadcom's next quarterly report lands December 9, 2026, after market close, according to Ad-Hoc-News, giving investors their first real checkpoint against the $34.8 billion revenue guide and the $21.7 billion AI revenue target. Until then, the gap between Broadcom's AI pipeline and Intel's broader recovery remains the defining split in the chip sector heading into next year.