[DigitalToday reporter Jinju Hong] Broadcom Chief Executive Officer Hock Tan (탄) has issued a blunt warning about overheating in AI investment while also supporting large-scale fundraising for key customers to buy AI chips. After Tan’s remarks, Asian semiconductor stocks broadly weakened.

On Oct. 13, blockchain news outlet Cryptopolitan reported that Tan said at an event in Singapore on Oct. 12 that investors in AI-related assets are acting like casino gamblers. He said investors have “extreme expectations” and that many do not really know what they are investing in. He also likened companies’ spending on AI experiments to giving a child $10 worth of arcade tokens that are gone in 10 minutes with nothing learned.

Tan drew a line in particular on judging AI business profitability by revenue growth alone. He said OpenAI’s annualised revenue as of September of about $50 billion shows demand, but the long-term profit structure is a separate matter given massive training costs.

Market reaction was immediate. South Korea’s KOSPI fell more than 6% on Oct. 13, and Japan’s Nikkei 225 slid nearly 3%. SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics extended their declines. Investors were also weighed down by Chinese memory chipmaker CXMT’s expanding market share. CXMT posted a 10% share of global DRAM revenue in the second quarter of 2026, up sharply from 4% a year earlier. CXMT is also expanding into LPDDR6 and NAND flash. Nasdaq futures also fell.

Broadcom’s business direction, however, is geared toward rising AI demand separate from the warning. Broadcom expects AI chip revenue to rise about fourfold from about $5.8 billion this fiscal year to around $23.0 billion in fiscal 2028. In third-quarter results announced in September, revenue rose 86% from a year earlier to $29.6 billion. AI chip revenue jumped 221% to $16.7 billion. That growth depends on increased spending by major cloud companies and AI research labs such as OpenAI.

Broadcom is also deeply involved in customer fundraising. It was reported to be pursuing financial support of more than $50 billion for OpenAI’s development and purchases of custom processors. It pledged loans of up to $42.0 billion based on Anthropic’s computing capacity, and is also backing part of a $60.0 billion bank loan. The structure is expected to help lower Anthropic’s borrowing costs.

Cooperation between Broadcom and OpenAI is already under way. The two companies signed a cooperation agreement in 2025 to deploy 10 gigawatts of accelerators designed by OpenAI using Broadcom networking technology. At the time, Tan called it “a significant moment in the pursuit of artificial general intelligence.”

Tan’s comments may be read as an internal warning about the AI investment frenzy, but Broadcom’s performance and financial support moves also show that expanding AI infrastructure remains a core business for big companies. The market is expected to watch how long the profitability issues Tan warned about and the expansion in AI demand that Broadcom is directly financing can continue together.