Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B
Summary
Semiconductor giant Broadcom has confirmed plans to acquire cloud computing and virtualization tech company VMware in a deal worth $61 billion. Broadcom hasn’t shied away from big-dollar acquisitions as part of its growth strategy, having doled out a combined $30 billion for Symantec’s enterprise unit and mainframe software company CA Inc. over the past four years. While Broadcom is better known for chips that power devices including smartphones, PCs, and networking equipment, bringing VMware under its wing will help it diversify and become “the world’s leading infrastructure technology company,” according to a press release. What that means is that Broadcom is expanding beyond chips and looking to the enterprise software sphere, which — in the case of VMware — offers a highly lucrative recurring revenue model. Indeed, VMware has played a pivotal part in the technology world’s transition to the cloud, serving up software that powers multi-cloud management, infrastructure, networking, security, and more.
