Avago Technologies → Broadcom Corporation
A $37bn cash-and-share purchase in which Avago, a Singapore-based chip company built through acquisitions and run by Hock Tan, bought Broadcom and took its name — the deal that turned Avago's buy-and-streamline model into one of the world's most valuable technology companies.
$17bn cash plus about $20bn in shares, after which Avago adopted the Broadcom name.
- Value
- $37B
- Announced
- May 2015
- Completed
- February 2016
- Sector
- Technology
- Deal type
- acquisition
- Acquirer
- Avago Technologies (Singapore)
- Target
- Broadcom Corporation (United States)
Why it mattered
Avago began in 2005 as the chip unit that KKR and Silver Lake bought from Agilent for $2.6bn, and it grew by buying: LSI for $6.6bn in 2013, then Emulex and others. Broadcom, founded in 1991 by Henry Samueli and Henry Nicholas, made chips for wired and wireless communications. The agreement announced on 28 May 2015 offered Broadcom holders a choice, per share, of $54.50 in cash or 0.4378 shares of a new Singapore holding company, prorated to about half cash and half shares: $17bn in cash and about $20bn in stock, leaving Broadcom's shareholders with about 32% of a company valued at $77bn in enterprise value. Avago was the nominal survivor, but the combined company took the name Broadcom Limited. Tan promised $750m of annual cost savings within 18 months and said he would bring Broadcom to "a level of profitability consistent with Avago's long-term target model". Samueli became chief technology officer and joined the board. The transaction completed on 1 February 2016.
What it left behind
Pruning followed: in 2016 Broadcom's Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Zigbee products for the internet of things went to Cypress Semiconductor for $550m. The larger ambitions ran into Washington. In November 2017 Broadcom announced it would move its legal home from Singapore to Delaware, becoming Broadcom Inc., and its hostile bid for Qualcomm was blocked by presidential order in March 2018. Tan turned to infrastructure software instead, buying CA Technologies for $18.9bn in 2018, Symantec's enterprise security business for $10.7bn in 2019 and VMware for $69bn in 2023, whose licensing changes drew a complaint to the European Commission in March 2026. Broadcom passed $1 trillion in market value in December 2024 and $2 trillion in April 2026, and in 2025 some 42% of its revenue came from software. The former Broadcom Corporation survives as a subsidiary, its name now carried by the buyer. In a serial acquirer the operating model is what creates the value, and the target's name can be worth more than the buyer's own.