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Charlie Kawwas, president of the semiconductor solutions group at Broadcom, on Monday said that OpenAI is not the mystery $10 billion customer that it announced during its earnings call in September.
Kawwas appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” with OpenAI’s president, Greg Brockman, to discuss their plans to jointly build and deploy 10 gigawatts of custom artificial intelligence accelerators.
The deal was largely expected after analysts were quick to point to OpenAI as Broadcom’s potential new $10 billion partner. But after the companies officially unveiled their plans on Monday, Kawwas said OpenAI does not fit that description.
“I would love to take a $10 billion [purchase order] from my good friend Greg,” Kawwas said. “He has not given me that PO yet.”
Broadcom did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for additional comment.
OpenAI has been on an AI infrastructure deal-making blitz as the company looks to scale up its compute capacity to meet anticipated demand. The startup, which is valued at $500 billion, has inked multibillion-dollar agreements with Advanced Micro Devices, Nvidia and CoreWeave in recent weeks.
Broadcom does not disclose its large web-scale customers, but analysts have pointed to Google, Meta and TikTok parent ByteDance as three of its large clients. During its quarterly call with analysts in September, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said a fourth large customer had put in orders for $10 billion in custom AI chips.
The order increased Broadcom’s forecast for artificial intelligence revenue next year, which is when shipments will begin, Tan said during the call.
OpenAI and Broadcom have been working together for the last 18 months, and they will begin deploying racks of custom-designed chips starting late next year, the companies said Monday. The project will be completed by 2029.
“By building our own chip, we can embed what we’ve learned from creating frontier models and products directly into the hardware, unlocking new levels of capability and intelligence,” Brockman said in a release.
WATCH: Broadcom president Charlie Kawwas: Mystery $10 billion customer isn’t OpenAI
