Apple Expands Broadcom Spending While Bringing Wireless Chips In-House

Apple’s expanded Broadcom partnership is not a simple supplier-retention story. The company is committing more than $30 billion in US-focused chip spending with Broadcom while also reducing Broadcom’s role in some of the wireless components that historically made the supplier central to Apple devices.

Ed Ludlow framed the announcement as Apple “writing a bigger check for its US supply chain” and asked for the structure behind the headline number. Mark Gurman placed the deal inside Apple’s broader pattern of domestic-investment announcements, saying Apple “loves to put out these announcements every so often” and that President Donald Trump “obviously loves these types of announcements.”

Gurman tied the Broadcom expansion to Apple CEO Tim Cook’s earlier $600 billion commitment announcement in the Oval Office. The Broadcom portion, as Gurman described it, includes $30 billion in expenses for chips developed by Broadcom and produced in the United States. It also includes a $1.5 billion Apple capital-expenditure investment into Broadcom’s facility in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Gurman’s political read was direct: the Trump administration, like with Apple’s other US investment announcements, would likely welcome this one. But the more important operating point is that Apple is expanding a US production relationship with Broadcom at the same time it is taking over more of the connectivity stack itself.

Broadcom has long supplied Apple with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi chips, Gurman said — the components that let an iPhone connect to a home or office network and connect to other devices over Bluetooth. Apple relied on Broadcom for that role.

But Apple has also “designed them out,” in Gurman’s phrase. He said Apple built its own “M1 chips,” and described those parts as expanding rapidly into iPhones, iPads, and Macs. He also said Apple’s wireless chip will appear in a range of new smart-home devices in the coming months, including a new HomePod mini and a new Apple TV.

That makes the relationship narrower in one respect and broader in another. If Apple supplies more of its own Bluetooth and Wi-Fi silicon, Broadcom is no longer simply the default provider for those primary connectivity components. Yet Gurman emphasized that Apple is still working with Broadcom on “a range of things,” including components tied to the new announcement.

“So a lot of work going on with Broadcom,” Gurman said, “even though they’ve been designed out of their primary component.”

The result is not a clean replacement story. Apple is taking over one class of component while continuing to use Broadcom for adjacent, specialized parts that still matter to Apple’s wireless roadmap and AI infrastructure plans.

For this Broadcom announcement, Gurman identified RF filters as the key component. He described RF filters as parts that work with Apple’s in-house cellular modem roadmap: the C1, C2, and C3 modems that Apple is rolling out over the next few years.

That matters because Apple’s modem work is another instance of internalization. As Apple moves more cellular capability in-house, it still needs surrounding radio-frequency components. Broadcom’s role, as described by Gurman, is therefore not necessarily to provide the main connectivity brain, but to supply components that work with Apple’s own modem systems.

Gurman also said Broadcom is working with Apple on ASIC chips connected to upcoming Apple Intelligence servers. Those servers, he said, are expected to be deployed “over the next year and so forth.” He did not provide technical detail on the ASICs beyond their connection to Apple Intelligence server infrastructure, but the point is that Broadcom’s Apple relationship extends beyond handset wireless parts.

The shape of the deal is therefore more layered than the headline spending number suggests. Apple is combining domestic production, capital investment in a Colorado facility, and continued Broadcom engineering support around systems Apple is increasingly designing itself.

Bloomberg displayed market-data graphics for both companies while the deal was being discussed: Apple at 310.31 intraday, up 0.35 or 0.11%, and at 310.24 on a one-year view, up 100.25 or 47.75%; Broadcom Inc. at 386.13 intraday, up 15.35 or 4.14%, and at 386.32 on a one-year view, up 114.63 or 42.19%.