Stock splits were a big thing last year, with many major companies across industries launching such operations. Two of the most exciting were in the area of artificial intelligence (AI). Nvidia (NVDA -0.42%), the world’s No. 1 AI chip designer, and Broadcom (AVGO -1.12%), a networking giant, completed stock splits in June and July 2024, respectively.

What is a stock split, and why do companies go this route? These operations enable a company to bring down a soaring stock price to more reasonable levels, making the stock more accessible to a broader range of investors. Nvidia and Broadcom even said they decided on splits to make it easier for employees and investors to get in on their shares, which had surged more than 200% and about 100%, respectively, in 2023.

Stock splits don’t change the total market value of the company or anything fundamental, though. They simply involve offering more shares to current holders according to the ratio of the split. So, for example, in a 10-for-1 stock split, if you originally held one share, you would hold 10 shares post-split — but the total value of your holding would remain the same.

Because of this, a stock split alone isn’t a reason to buy or sell a stock. Still, it’s interesting to see how stock split players have performed a year after these operations, so let’s take a look at both Nvidia and Broadcom a year after their splits.

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Nvidia

Nvidia completed its 10-for-1 stock split on June 7 of last year, with shares trading at the split-adjusted price as of June 10. This brought the shares down from about $1,200 to $120. Since that time, Nvidia stock has experienced ups and downs, but it’s delivered a gain of more than 40%.

As mentioned, this operation isn’t the reason investors have flocked to Nvidia over the past year (though a lower price per share may have made it easier for some to get in on the growth story). What has driven Nvidia’s share price performance is the ongoing high demand for its graphics processing units (GPUs), or AI chips, and related products and services.

What also helped this AI leader was its strong execution of a big launch: Nvidia released its Blackwell architecture and chip this past winter to demand that CEO Jensen Huang called “insane.” The company generated $11 billion in revenue from Blackwell in its very first quarter of commercialization and maintained a gross margin above 70%, ensuring high profitability on sales.

Although investors worried about potential headwinds, such as import tariffs or a decrease in AI spending, these concerns have eased. Trade talks have spurred optimism that tariffs may not be as hefty as initially expected, and companies have reiterated their AI investment plans. All of this helped boost Nvidia’s shares in recent weeks, even pushing the company to a $4 trillion market cap, making it the first company ever to reach this level.

Broadcom

Broadcom executed its stock split on July 12, and the stock began trading on July 15 at the new price. Like Nvidia, the company decided on a 10-for-1 split to bring its share price down — in this case, from about $1,700 to $170. Broadcom stock has also climbed in the double digits since the operation, rising more than 65%.

And like Nvidia, Broadcom saw its shares take off thanks to demand from AI customers. This company is a networking leader, making thousands of products used in a variety of locations — from your smartphone to major data centers. But in recent times, demand from big cloud service providers to support their AI development has helped revenue skyrocket.

In the most recent quarter, AI revenue surged 77% to $4.1 billion, and the company says it expects this momentum to continue in the current quarter and through the next fiscal year. This is amid demand for both connectivity products and Broadcom’s accelerated processing units (XPUs), a type of processor for specific AI tasks.

The company says its networking expertise and wide range of products — from switches and routers to network interface cards (NICs), which connect computers to networks — have been key growth drivers as cloud service providers ramp up their AI platforms.

Broadcom stock followed a similar path to Nvidia, declining in April of this year due to general tariff concerns, but it has also rebounded and is on the rise today. The stock even closed at a record high just a few days ago.

Could the post-split success continue?

Both Nvidia and Broadcom have completed successful post-split years, scoring double-digit gains. Nvidia is slightly less expensive from a valuation standpoint than it was a year ago, but Broadcom’s valuation has advanced.

AVGO PE Ratio (Forward) data by YCharts. PE Ratio = price-to-earnings ratio.

Still, these AI players remain reasonably priced, considering their earnings track record and long-term prospects in this growth market. It’s impossible, of course, to guarantee what these stocks will do next, but the current environment supports the idea of more gains ahead. Even more importantly, Nvidia and Broadcom are well positioned to win in the AI market over the long run.

With a nearly 14% share price gain in June, Broadcom (AVGO 1.90%) was a clear stock market winner during the month. The initial boost came from the company’s impressive fiscal second-quarter 2025 results, which were reported near the start of June, and were subsequently compounded by an important product launch and a series of positive analyst takes on the stock.

Setting a new quarterly record

During that period, Broadcom managed to grow its revenue by a robust 20% year over year to just over $15 billion — a new quarterly record for the chipmaker. Better, its non-GAAP (adjusted) net income soared 44% higher to nearly $7.8 billion, or $1.58 per share.

Image source: Getty Images.

Although expectations were fairly high, with consensus analyst estimates sitting just below those figures, at $14.95 billion for revenue and $1.57 for per-share adjusted net income, investors ultimately traded up Broadcom stock on the news.

There were other reasons to be satisfied, after all. Broadcom’s rather sparse guidance called for roughly $15.8 billion in revenue for its current (third) quarter; like the trailing results, this is slightly ahead of the average pundit projection ($15.77 billion).

Much of Broadcom’s growth comes from its position as a prominent supplier of chips for artificial intelligence (AI) functionalities. This continues to be a white-hot segment of the tech industry, and the company said its AI-related revenue rose 46% in the second quarter to more than $4.4 billion. More growth is in store, most likely, as Broadcom forecasts this to rise to $5.1 billion in the third quarter.

Accordingly, the company has clearly prioritized the segment. Also, in June, it launched the Tomahawk 6 switch, a product designed to handle the comparatively more intense resource requirements of AI. This specialized hardware manages data traffic flowing through a network. We don’t yet have a solid indication of how the initial takeup of the Tomahawk was, but it’s sure to have been strong.

Banking on a bright future

The rise of AI is relentless and unstoppable, so it’s no surprise that Broadcom is a favored stock among investors and analysts alike. Some in the latter group of individuals were busy in June working up new takes on the company following that earnings report, and for the most part, these analyses were bullish.

One of the more hopeful ones came from HSBC. The bank’s Frank Lee upgraded his Broadcom recommendation from hold to buy and, in the process, more than doubled its price target to $400 per share from $240. Lee cited Broadcom’s strength in the application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) category, an important one for (again) AI, as a key factor in his move.

Broadcom (AVGO 1.12%) stock has absolutely crushed the broader market over the past three years, registering eye-popping gains of 381%, as compared to the 93% gains clocked by the PHLX Semiconductor Sector index during the same period.

So, an investment of $1,000 in Broadcom stock three years ago is now worth over $4,813. The good part is that this semiconductor giant seems built for more upside over the next three years, as it now has a new growth driver in the form of artificial intelligence (AI).

Let’s see how AI is moving the needle for Broadcom and check how much upside this semiconductor stock could deliver in the next three years.

Image source: Getty Images.

Broadcom’s growth is set to take off in the next three years

Broadcom recently announced results for the second quarter of fiscal 2025 (which ended on May 4). The chipmaker’s revenue in the first six months of the fiscal year increased by 22% from the year-ago period to almost $30 billion. This puts Broadcom on track to end fiscal 2025 with $60 billion in revenue at the current run rate, which would be a 16% jump over the previous fiscal year’s top line.

Analysts, however, forecast a strong increase of 22% in Broadcom’s revenue this year, indicating that its growth is likely to accelerate in the second half of the fiscal year. That won’t be surprising, since Broadcom’s AI revenue is set to grow at a faster pace. The company is forecasting a 60% increase in AI revenue in the current quarter to $5.1 billion. That will be better than the 46% year-over-year jump that the company saw last quarter.

However, this is just the beginning of Broadcom’s terrific AI-fueled growth. The company is on track to end the current fiscal year with $18 billion in AI revenue (based on its fiscal Q3 forecast, which will bring its AI sales for the first three quarters to $13.6 billion). That would be a 50% increase from fiscal 2024. Broadcom, however, has a serviceable addressable market (SAM) worth $75 billion, at the midpoint of its guidance range, in AI chips.

It sees this opportunity materializing by fiscal 2027 based on the three hyperscale cloud customers that are currently deploying its AI-tuned application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and networking processors. But then, that opportunity could turn out to be much larger than Broadcom is projecting. AMD CEO Lisa Su estimates that the AI accelerator market could hit a whopping $500 billion in revenue by 2028.

The custom AI processors Broadcom sells are expected to account for a fourth of that opportunity by 2028, as per its peer Marvell Technology. That would put Broadcom’s addressable opportunity in custom AI chips at a whopping $125 billion after four years. That doesn’t seem outlandish, considering that cloud hyperscalers such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet‘s Google are all rushing to develop in-house chips to power their AI workloads.

These companies are designing in-house AI processors so they can reduce operating costs by deploying custom silicon in large numbers. Broadcom benefits from this trend, as it reportedly makes custom AI chips for the likes of Meta Platforms, Alphabet, and ByteDance. The chipmaker points out that each of its three hyperscaler customers is on track to deploy 1 million cloud clusters accelerated by its custom processors by 2027.

Moreover, the company is on track to bring four new hyperscale cloud customers into its fold, which is likely to increase its addressable market further. As a result, Broadcom seems well placed to outpace analysts’ growth expectations going forward.

This AI stock could skyrocket in the next three years

Broadcom’s share of the custom AI chip market reportedly stands at a whopping 70%. Assuming that the company loses share in this space (which seems a tad unlikely, considering the new customers it is set to bring on board) and controls 50% of custom AI chips after three years, its AI revenue could soar to more than $62 billion a year (based on the $125 billion revenue estimated calculated earlier).

Broadcom’s AI revenue stood at $12.2 billion in fiscal 2024 (which ended on Nov. 3, 2024), with the remaining $39.4 billion coming from other applications. So its revenue from AI could jump by 5x in just three years. Assuming Broadcom’s revenue from its other segments remains constant after three years, its top line could exceed $101 billion after three fiscal years (with $62 billion coming from AI).

That would be much higher than what analysts are estimating.

Data by YCharts.

The stronger-than-expected growth that Broadcom may be able to deliver could pave the way for solid stock price gains over the next three years. That’s why Broadcom investors would do well to continue holding this AI stock in their portfolios, as it has the potential to sustain its rally in the long run thanks to the growing demand for custom AI silicon.

The U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is warning of Broadcom Brocade Fabric OS, Commvault web servers, and Qualitia Active! Mail clients vulnerabilities that are actively exploited in attacks.

The flaws were added yesterday to CISA’s ‘Known Exploited Vulnerabilities’ (KEV) catalog, with the Broadcom Brocade Fabric OS and Commvault flaws not previously tagged as exploited.

Broadcom Brocade Fabric OS is a specialized operating system that runs on the company’s Brocade Fibre Channel switches to manage and optimize storage area networks (SAN).

Earlier this month, Broadcom disclosed an arbitrary code execution flaw impacting Fabric OS versions 9.1.0 through 9.1.1d6, tracked under CVE-2025-1976.

While the flaw requires admin privileges to exploit, Broadcom says it has been actively exploited in attacks.

“This vulnerability can allow the user to execute any existing Fabric OS command or can also be used to modify the Fabric OS itself, including adding their own subroutines,” reads Broadcom’s bulletin.

“Even though achieving this exploit first requires valid access to a role with admin privileges, this vulnerability has been actively exploited in the field.”

CVE-2025-1976 was addressed with the release of Brocade Fabric OS 9.1.1d7. The latest branch, 9.2.0, is not impacted by this vulnerability.

The Commvault flaw, tracked under CVE-2025-3928, is an unspecified security problem that authenticated attackers can exploit remotely to plant webshells on target servers.

Commvault web servers are user-facing and API components of a backup system used by enterprises to protect and restore critical data.

Despite the requirements for authentication and exposure of the environment to the internet, the flaw is under active exploitation in the wild.

CVE-2025-3928 was fixed in versions 11.36.46, 11.32.89, 11.28.141, and 11.20.217 for Windows and Linux platforms.

The third flaw CISA added to KEV is CVE-2025-42599, a stack-based buffer overflow problem impacting all versions of Active! up to and including ‘BuildInfo: 6.60.05008561’ on all OS platforms.

Active! mail is a web-based email client widely used by government, financial, and IT service organizations in Japan.

The flaw was flagged as actively exploited last week by Japan’s CERT, while SMB providers and ISPs in the country also announced service outages caused by related exploitation activity.

Qualitia addressed the problem with the release of Active! Mail 6 BuildInfo: 6.60.06008562.

CISA has given impacted organizations until May 17, 2025, to apply fixes or available mitigations for CVE-2025-3928 and May 19, 2025, for the other two flaws.

VMware Workstation users report that the software’s automatic update functionality is broken after Broadcom redirected the download URL to its generic support page, triggering certificate errors.

The software contains a feature that checks for new updates on startup (if configured) and can be manually triggered by clicking Help > Software Updates. This will cause the program to connect to the software update server at https://softwareupdate.broadcom.com/cds to check for and download software updates.

However, this URL now redirects to Broadcom’s generic support page, https://support.broadcom.com/, causing the application to issue certificate validation errors and rendering its built-in update mechanism unusable.

“A certificate error occurred while connecting to the update server. Check your Internet settings or contact your system administrator,” reads the VMware Workstation error.

Users are now forced to log in and manually check Broadcom’s website for updates, download the correct version, and install it themselves, making it frustrating for customers who expect a seamless experience.

“To update your VMware Workstation Pro, you’ll need to manually download the latest installer from the Broadcom support portal. It’s worth noting that this change has caused frustration among users, as it was implemented without prior notice,” reads a post to the Broadcom community forums.

While VMware Workstation continues to function, this broken update system may cause users to miss important bug fixes or security patches, especially when it is not apparent that the automatic update feature is broken until you try to use it.

Broadcom has not yet issued a public statement or workaround for the issue, and BleepingComputer has confirmed it is still broken in VMware Workstation 17.6.3, the latest software version.

BleepingComputer contacted Broadcom with questions about the change but has not received a response.