Shares of custom chipmaker Broadcom (AVGO 4.97%) have been under pressure of late. They're up about 8% for the year, but it wasn't all that long ago that the stock was flying much higher, at nearly $500. As of Monday's close, however, it was at just $372 -- down 25% from its recent high.
The company, however, did announce a new custom chip that could lead to some exciting growth opportunities ahead for the business, focused on inference. Could this be the catalyst that could lift the tech stock to new heights?
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Broadcom partners with OpenAI on new LLM-optimized processor
Last week, Broadcom unveiled a chip that could spice up its growth, called Jalapeño. It's a chip that centers around OpenAI's vision for artificial intelligence (AI), and that's designed for large language models (LLMs). The processor is modeled to meet the needs of agentic AI workloads, which have been growing in importance as tech companies have developed cutting-edge models that are now able to take on multi-step processes, focusing more on inference rather than development.
Broadcom says that while it is still in testing, Jalapeño's per-watt performance is "substantially better than current state-of-the-art." This is key for not only OpenAI, which owns the popular ChatGPT chatbot, but also other companies that are investing heavily in AI and that need greater efficiency. This can unlock significant revenue from OpenAI, and it could help Broadcom develop similar chips for companies involved with other chatbots.
NASDAQ: AVGO
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Should you buy Broadcom stock right now?
Broadcom's most recent quarterly results weren't enough to give the stock a boost, even though its revenue rose by 48% to $22.2 billion. The challenge for Broadcom is that with a high valuation -- the stock trades at more than 60 times earnings -- the bar is set fairly high. The launch of Jalapeño may be the catalyst the business needs for the stock to get to new highs.
At a reduced price and with plenty of growth opportunities still out there for the business, now could be an enticing time to buy Broadcom's stock. There's still some risk due to its high valuation and the expectations that will inevitably come with it, but with Broadcom being a trusted partner among key hyperscalers and being well-positioned to meet the needs of AI models, now could be a good time to buy the stock and hang on for the long haul.
