For Broadcom, a high-value semiconductor and infrastructure-software company, the company it acquired in 2023 for about $69 billion was VMware.
Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMware on November 22, 2023. The transaction expanded Broadcom beyond semiconductors and connectivity hardware into enterprise software, especially virtualization and private-cloud infrastructure.
VMware was founded in 1998 and became widely known for virtualization software, which allows multiple virtual machines to run on one physical computer. This technology helps organizations use servers more efficiently and manage computing environments across data centers and clouds.
The acquisition followed regulatory review in several jurisdictions, including the United States, European Union, and United Kingdom. Broadcom’s strategy after closing emphasized VMware’s core virtualization products and subscription-based software services. The deal is sometimes confused with Broadcom’s earlier proposed acquisition of Qualcomm, but that transaction was blocked by the U.S. government in 2018 and never completed.