Broadcom CEO Hock Tan reaffirmed the company's AI revenue targets this week, telling CNBC that demand for compute infrastructure remains 'very strong' despite growing calls to slow AI development. Speaking during a September 14 appearance on CNBC's Mad Money, Tan said 'We see the demand for compute infrastructure, for AI development or AI frontier models, and inference for the products that they feed to the world, as continuing to be very strong and, I believe, very durable.' The remarks came as semiconductor stocks sold off sharply on concerns that moderation in frontier model training could ripple through the entire AI supply chain. Broadcom shares fell more than 4.8% on September 14, while the iShares Semiconductor ETF dropped 5.6%, reflecting investor anxiety about reduced spending on data centers and custom chips.
Qualcomm shares climbed 4.3% on Tuesday to hit a two-month high before paring some gains, as investors increasingly warmed to the chipmaker's push into AI data-center infrastructure. The rally came as StoneX reiterated its 'Buy' rating and $270 price target for Qualcomm, citing encouraging leverage in the company's data-center business. Last week, Qualcomm announced a multigenerational collaboration with Amazon to develop customized AI chips for AWS, with Amazon potentially purchasing up to $60 billion of Qualcomm's AI data-center chips and related products. The partnership matters significantly because Qualcomm has historically been viewed primarily as a smartphone-chip company, but is now targeting AI inference workloads where its emphasis on power-efficient processing could provide a foothold in data centers.
Morgan Stanley co-president Dan Simkowitz told CNBC on Wednesday that the initial public offering market is ready for large deals, citing SpaceX as an example. According to reports from CNBC, Simkowitz declined to discuss individual deals but confirmed his bank is among those reported to be leading Anthropic's IPO alongside Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan. Anthropic was last valued at nearly ₹965 billion in May, and its listing has been reported for the autumn. However, recent developments show OpenAI's long-awaited IPO has been delayed to next year as reported by Reuters, with the news knocking stakeholder SoftBank shares by about 13% on Monday.
Simkowitz stated that the push by OpenAI and Anthropic to slow releases of the most advanced artificial intelligence models will not dent demand or the spending behind it. As reported by CNBC, he emphasized that spending on compute and chips is not stopping, nor is the financing behind that build. The bank's partners include Anthropic, Google, xAI and Microsoft, with Sam Altman having presented to the bank's board in May 2022, months before ChatGPT launched. Goldman Sachs expects cumulative global AI spending through the end of the decade to reach as much as 5% of global gross domestic product, with much of that funded by debt and equity.
The comments come amid concerns about the timing of the AI model slowdown push. As reported by CNBC, Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei asked rival labs on September 12 to slow capability gains, with Altman and Elon Musk backing him. Investor Michael Burry argued two days later that the push serves the listings rather than safety, describing it as hype around the listings. Altman has since pushed OpenAI's own debut beyond 2026. Recent apocalyptic warnings about AI's threat to human life reached a crescendo over the weekend, with a resigning employee of Anthropic warning that the new technology 'could kill us all' by the end of the decade. By Sunday, there appeared to be consensus among Anthropic boss Dario Amodei, OpenAI's Sam Altman, Elon Musk at SpaceX, Apple's Tim Cook and others about the need to slow development down.
Despite industry calls for slowdowns, Morgan Stanley's strategists estimated that almost $200 billion of AI projects were cancelled or delayed last year and through the first quarter of 2026 due to rising domestic political opposition to U.S. data center building. The bank's analysis shows that capex is set to account for roughly one-third of all U.S. GDP growth this year and next, with that effect likely amplified by the boost to household wealth from sustained investment-driven equity gains. Morgan Stanley pointed out that demand for computing power still far exceeds supply, meaning any slowdown in the AI buildout may 'strengthen the position of the 'merchants of compute' – hyperscalers – by increasing the scarcity value of their installed base and enhancing their pricing power.' The political imperative to press ahead is clear, with Trump blasting out on social media that 'there is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China.'
