In our social media driven world, attention spans are probably at levels our founding fathers wouldn’t be able to fathom. Try telling Patrick Henry you forgot to mow the lawn because you got lost in a TikTok rabbit hole of Alex Jones reels… he’d probably start another revolution on the spot. Of course, the stock market follows the same rule. If you don’t have people’s attention, you’re losing the game.

And Broadcom’s CEO Hock Tan just gave us all a masterclass in how to grab attention… by turning a relatively boring earnings call into something as mysterious as a Knives Out movie. In the middle of the call, Broadcom randomly announced a $10 billion order for custom AI chips, but then pulled the ultimate tease by refusing to say who the customer was. He didn’t drop a name or a hint, just a fat check signed by “guess who.” And the little “I know something that you don’t know” trick worked brilliantly. At the time of writing, Broadcom’s up 11% as investors smashed the “BUY” button, adding about $160 billion to its market cap in a single move. 

So naturally, the guessing game kicked off. After “Money Twitter” threw out some of the worst theories you’ve ever seen, the adults (J.P. Morgan, Bernstein, and Morgan Stanley) came in and said, “Yeah, it’s probably OpenAI.” And if you think about it… that checks out way more than the internet’s fever dreams about Trump hoarding chips to build a chatbot army to clap back at Elon’s Grok.

(Source: CNBC)

Reuters already reported last year that OpenAI was working with Broadcom on chip designs, and Sam Altman hasn’t exactly been quiet about the fact that his company is chewing through compute power like I go through water sprinklers (I just overseeded my lawn). He’s even said they’ll need to double their fleet in the next five months just to keep pace with GPT-5. Pair that with Nvidia’s chips being both insanely expensive and constantly sold out, and Broadcom suddenly looks less like a side chick and more like a long-term partner Sammie boy can’t quit.

If it really is OpenAI, the implications are big. It means OpenAI is joining the likes of Google, Amazon, and Meta in designing its own chips rather than depending solely on Nvidia. That’s bad news for Jensen Huang’s leather jackets, but huge for Broadcom, which has quietly turned into a serious player in the custom chip game. Analysts now say this deal could push Broadcom’s AI sales in 2026 north of $40 billion, up from the $30 billion they expected just a quarter ago.

And while everyone was busy playing detective, the actual earnings didn’t disappoint either. Broadcom pulled in $15.96 billion in revenue versus $15.83 billion expected, with adjusted EPS at $1.69 versus $1.65. AI revenue jumped 63% year over year to $5.2 billion, and the company expects that to hit $6.2 billion next quarter. Guidance for Q4 revenue came in at $17.4 billion, above Wall Street’s $17.02 billion. Oh, and Hock Tan (who is 73, by the way, and has zero relation to “Hawk Tuah girl”) announced he’s not going anywhere for at least another five years.

Anyway, credit where it’s due… Broadcom seized the moment and turned a routine earnings update into a mystery bomb. They sprinkled in enough breadcrumbs to keep everyone chasing the story, and the suspense helped send the stock even higher.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Google, Amazon, and Meta as mentioned in the article.