Apple and Broadcom have reportedly agreed to a chip deal worth more than US$290bn — an extension of their existing partnership and, if the figure holds, one of the largest component agreements ever struck in the industry.
Broadcom supplies Apple with wireless connectivity silicon and has been a fabrication partner for custom components; agreements of this scale typically span many years and lock in both capacity and roadmap alignment across generations of devices — and increasingly, AI silicon.
The deal illustrates the defining dynamic of this cycle: compute buyers of sufficient scale no longer purchase chips, they purchase futures on entire supply chains, leaving the spot market thinner for everyone else.