The Two-Ticket Lab — Three Days Anthropic Became Broadcom's Largest XPU Customer While Also Anchoring NVIDIA's $35B

The Two-Ticket Lab

On the September 2 earnings call, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan placed two sentences side by side: "Anthropic is emerging as our largest XPU customer" and "Google's TPU orders are easing." That same week, NVIDIA anchored a $35B compute deal with Anthropic. Read together, these disclosures are the most distinctive structural shift in US semiconductor news over the last three days — for the first time, one AI lab has become the top anchor customer of both the custom silicon side (Broadcom) and the merchant GPU side (NVIDIA) simultaneously.

The Broadcom anchor swap

Hock Tan's two sentences, read together, mean the anchor of Broadcom's XPU pipeline is shifting from Google to Anthropic. For years, Google TPU was effectively the carrier for Broadcom's XPU line. That role is being filled by Anthropic — and the reason Tan can guide confidently to a two-year surge in AI chip sales is precisely this anchor migration. Morgan Stanley's framing of the earnings setup — "the AI revenue expectations gap is the key bull-bear battleground" — sits exactly on this fault line. The question is how smoothly the anchor swap executes.

NVIDIA's $35B note

The same week, NVIDIA structured a $35B compute deal with Anthropic. The market is now examining this alongside the NVIDIA-OpenAI $105B arrangement as a representative case of "circular financing" — NVIDIA provides capital, Anthropic uses that capital to buy NVIDIA GPUs. 24/7 Wall St called it "the ultimate circular financing play"; Investor's Business Daily reported that NVIDIA shares slipped on the concern. With separate CoreWeave and Nebius circular-financing worries surfacing in parallel, this was the first week the self-referential character of the AI capital cycle entered valuation noise.

What the two-ticket anchor means

The decisive fact is that Anthropic is now the top anchor on both sides. Hyperscalers have historically leaned one way — Google backs TPU (Broadcom); Meta leans merchant GPU (NVIDIA + AMD); Microsoft mixes in-house silicon with NVIDIA. Anthropic has become the top-tier customer of both sides simultaneously. The negotiating leverage this creates is new. Anthropic can now substitute Broadcom XPU and NVIDIA GPU against each other — which functionally caps NVIDIA's pricing power. NVIDIA's MediaTek partnership move to defend its AI moat (MarketBeat, September 1) reads as a defensive signal against exactly this anchor diversification.

Why the leverage matters — the memory backdrop

The weight of that leverage shows up in Dell's earnings. On September 1, Dell told its call that "the shortage is all about DRAM," with an AI backlog approaching $100B. On the same day, Goldman Sachs raised its Q3 PC DRAM ASP forecast to +18–23%, and Phison warned of the worst NAND shortage on record in 2027. DDR5 16Gb spot is holding at $54.0, and TrendForce noted supplier quotes remain firm even as buyer demand softens. Seeking Alpha summarized it: "the AI memory shortage has spread beyond HBM." Supply is tight and prices are rising. In that environment, if Anthropic can switch between two silicon providers, part of the GPU margin uplift eventually accrues to the lab, not the vendor.

A China side note

What is striking is that this reshuffle is happening inside the US camp. An ASML supplier said this week that China lags 15 years behind in advanced chipmaking tools (Bloomberg, September 2); Rest of World reported that Taiwan is in the sixth year of tracking covert Chinese chip labs. The US-Taiwan-Korea camp keeps supply-side dominance, but the reshuffle over who anchors demand is a separate story.

Positioning

• AVGO: The anchor swap actually raises XPU revenue visibility. The concern over Google TPU easing is outweighed by Anthropic's expansion as the replacement anchor. Tan's two-year AI revenue surge guide reflects this anchor migration. The risk is if Anthropic's actual compute burn lags its pipeline visibility.
• NVDA: The $35B Anthropic deal gives revenue visibility but introduces valuation noise through circular financing concerns. With Anthropic now holding Broadcom XPU as a substitute, NVIDIA's negotiating advantage is subtly reduced.
• MU / SK Hynix: The memory shortage persists regardless of Anthropic's silicon choice — both sides need memory. XPU capacity expansion actually widens the demand base for HBM4 and data-center storage.

Risk

Anthropic being the top anchor on both sides means an Anthropic revenue miss would expose both AVGO and NVDA. If the circular-financing narrative strengthens, both names see multiple compression together. The last three days confirmed that Anthropic is the new swing anchor — but the weight of that anchor rests on Anthropic's own monetization trajectory.

Key Sources: - Broadcom CEO: Anthropic Emerging as Largest XPU Customer as Google TPU Orders Ease (Benzinga, 2026-09-03) - Nvidia anchors Anthropic's $35B compute deal amid circular financing concerns (Dealroom, 2026-09-01) - Is Nvidia's $35 Billion Anthropic Pact the Ultimate Circular Financing Play? (24/7 Wall St., 2026-09-01) - Dell: DRAM shortage limits AI infrastructure expansion; $100B backlog, guidance raised (Moomoo, 2026-09-02) - Goldman Sachs Raises PC DRAM Price Forecast to 18-23% in Q3 (KuCoin, 2026-09-02) - plus 5 more