Broadcom is purchasing VMware for $61 Billion!
Broadcom is paying $61 billion in cash and stock for VMware. It’s the third-largest tech deal ever, after Dell’s $67 billion EMC deal and Microsoft’s upcoming $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Broadcom is best known for its chip division, which designs and manufactures semiconductors for modems, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth chips that are used in a variety of products.
Broadcom’s software division will benefit from this massive deal for VMware. VMware focuses on cloud computing and virtualization technology and was previously owned by Dell until it was spun off last year. If you’ve used a virtual machine at work in the last decade, it was almost certainly powered by VMware or its rival Citrix. Broadcom processors are utilized in devices from Apple, Google, and others, and it’s possible that the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth devices you’ve used were powered by Broadcom chips at some point in the networking chain.
The combination of VMware and Broadcom, which is focused on enterprise infrastructure and cloud computing, might be a potent one. Broadcom previously paid $18.9 billion for CA Technologies, a producer of security and database software, and $10.7 billion for Symantec’s enterprise security unit in 2019. It sold the Symantec business to Accenture for an unknown sum less than a year later.
Broadcom plans to rebrand its Broadcom Software Group as VMware and integrate its existing infrastructure and security software offerings. “By combining our assets and brilliant staff with Broadcom’s current enterprise software portfolio, all of which are housed under the VMware brand, we’ve created a tremendous enterprise software player,” says VMware CEO Raghu Raghuram.
Michael Dell, who owns about 50% of VMware with Silver Lake, has backed the purchase, which is anticipated to finish in Broadcom’s fiscal year 2023. If the acquisition goes through, it will be one of the most significant in the history of technology. Broadcom’s last attempt to buy Qualcomm for more than $100 billion was thwarted by the Trump administration, which cited national security concerns as a reason.
