Shares of Broadcom (AVGO) surged Thursday after a series of Wall Street analyst upgrades, and rising optimism surrounding artificial intelligence infrastructure spending boosted investor sentiment toward the semiconductor giant.
Broadcom shares climbed as much as 5.5% during the session and were recently trading up about 4.3% at $434.7.
The rally pushed the stock to its 52-week high of $439.75.
The gains came as analysts raised price targets on the company, citing Broadcom’s growing role in artificial intelligence chip infrastructure and long-term revenue opportunities tied to hyperscale data center spending.
Analysts raise targets on AI growth outlook
Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers maintained an Overweight rating on Broadcom and raised his price target to $545 from $430.
The analyst said earlier weakness in the stock had overlooked important catalysts, including Broadcom’s expanding relationship with Alphabet.
Broadcom is a major supplier of application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, which are customized semiconductors designed for specialized artificial intelligence workloads.
The company works with Google to design and manufacture its Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs.
Investor enthusiasm increased further after Google announced that a “select group of customers” would now be allowed to purchase TPUs directly for use in their own data centers, expanding beyond the prior cloud-only access model.
Analysts viewed the move as opening a potentially significant new revenue stream for Broadcom.
Other Wall Street firms also raised their forecasts on the stock.
Wolfe Research lifted its price target to $500 from $420 while maintaining an Outperform rating.
Meanwhile, Citigroup named Broadcom its top semiconductor pick for 2026 and raised its target price to $500 from $475.
AI revenue projections remain central focus
Much of the bullish sentiment surrounding Broadcom has centered on the company’s rapidly expanding AI-related revenue base.
Broadcom reported AI semiconductor revenue of $8.4 billion during the first quarter of fiscal 2026, representing year-over-year growth of 106%.
Management guided for AI revenue of $10.7 billion during the second quarter and said AI chip revenue alone could exceed $100 billion in 2027.
Analysts noted that AI could account for roughly 81% of Broadcom’s total sales by fiscal fourth-quarter 2028, up from approximately 49% currently.
The company is viewed as occupying a strategic position within the AI infrastructure ecosystem because it supplies both custom AI accelerators and high-speed networking components used in large-scale data centers.
The broader AI spending outlook has also continued improving.
Bank of America recently raised its forecast for the AI data center systems market to $1.7 trillion by 2030, up from a previous estimate of $1.4 trillion.
The bank expects AI accelerators alone to represent approximately $1.2 trillion of that market.
US-China summit also supports semiconductor stocks
Broader market sentiment also improved Thursday as investors monitored developments from the summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.
The two leaders were expected to discuss tariffs, Taiwan, rare earths, and Chinese purchases of US goods — issues viewed as highly relevant to the semiconductor industry and global supply chains.
Analysts suggested the meeting could help reduce trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies.
The improving geopolitical backdrop helped lift the broader market, with the S&P 500, Nasdaq, and Dow Jones Industrial Average all posting gains during the session.
For Broadcom investors, the combination of rising AI demand, improving analyst sentiment, and easing trade-war concerns created a strong backdrop for further gains as the company approaches its next earnings report on June 3.
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