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How They Make Money

πŸ“Š PRO: This Week in Visuals

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App Economy Insights
Jun 06, 2026
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Welcome to the Saturday PRO edition of How They Make Money.

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In case you missed it:

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  • ❄️ Snowflake: AI Consumption Wins


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Today at a glance:

  1. πŸ“ˆ Broadcom: AI Bookings Triple Shipments

  2. πŸ–₯️ HPE: AI Demand Pulls Forward

  3. πŸ§‘β€βš•οΈ Veeva: Falcon Targets Agentic Labor

  4. 🌐 Samsara: Operational AI Scales

  5. πŸ”· Rubrik: Agentic Cyber Resilience

  6. 🧘🏻 Lululemon: Turnaround Stalls

  7. πŸ› οΈ GitLab: AI Pivot With Layoffs


1. πŸ“ˆ Broadcom: AI Bookings Triple Shipments

Broadcom's Q2 revenue rose 48% Y/Y to $22.2 billion ($70 million beat), with non-GAAP EPS of $2.44 ($0.04 beat).

  • Semiconductor solutions as a whole grew 79% to $15 billion, driven by AI semiconductor revenue, which jumped 143% Y/Y to $10.8 billion.

  • Infrastructure software grew 9% to $7.2 billion.

Operating margin hit a record 49%, and free cash flow reached $10.3 billion (46% of revenue). Shares still fell nearly 15% post-earnings, giving back most of the $270 billion in market cap added over the prior five sessions.

Broadcom is seen as a major beneficiary of Google's announcement earlier this week that it is raising ~$85 billion in equity to fund its AI infrastructure buildout. Google is one of Broadcom's six core custom XPU customers.

For Q2, Broadcom’s headline metric was order velocity. AI semiconductor bookings exceeded $30 billion, roughly three times what the company shipped, with CEO Hock Tan saying β€œour visibility runs all the way to 2028.” AI networking accounted for nearly 40% of AI revenue, though Tan expects this to normalize toward 30% as custom XPUs ramp.

Expectations were sky-high ahead of the print:

  • Q3 AI semiconductor guidance of $16 billion implies a 200% Y/Y growth, but it missed the $17.2 billion buy-side estimate.

  • Tan implied full-year FY26 AI revenue of around $56 billion, which was short of the $57.6 billion consensus.

  • The $100 billion FY27 AI target was reiterated during the call, but not raised.

  • Multi-year customer commitments are real but back-end loaded into late FY27 and FY28.

Broadcom announced major customer-specific deployments:

  • 1.3 GW for OpenAI in 2027 (part of a 10 GW deal through 2029).

  • 3 GW for Meta through the end of 2028 (with the first 1 GW starting in H2 2027).

  • A $35 billion debt financing deal with Apollo and Blackstone to fund Anthropic's purchase of Google TPU chips that Broadcom helped develop, with Broadcom backstopping the largest portions of the transaction. The arrangement is part of a broader AI XPU Platform targeting 20+ GW of LLM compute capacity through 2028.

Broadcom guided Q3 revenue to $29.4 billion (vs. $28.47 billion consensus), with semiconductor revenue at $20.5 billion (up 124% Y/Y).

The sell-off was primarily about Broadcom failing to raise its $100 billion FY27 AI revenue target, compounded by Tan acknowledging that Google will diversify its TPU supply. Investors are left wondering whether management is staying cautious to set up future beats or whether the strength in bookings is already priced in.


2. πŸ–₯️ HPE: AI Demand Pulls Forward

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