Broadcom Boss Hock Tan Turns Crypto’s Gambling Criticism on AI Investors

Broadcom is the chipmaker at the heart of the AI boom, and on Monday its chief executive told a Singapore audience that many of those funding it “have no clue what they are investing in.”

Tan said a number of investors have expectations so high that “it’s almost like they are in a casino.” That kind of criticism is familiar to crypto.

Crypto Drew the Gambling Contract Label First

Charlie Munger, the late Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman, called on the US in February 2023 to ban crypto. He labelled it “a gambling contract with a nearly 100% edge for the house.”

The official response went further, with British lawmakers concluding in 2023 that retail crypto trading “more closely resembles gambling than it does a financial service.”

Fabio Panetta of the European Central Bank described coins with no asset behind them as “a gamble disguised as an investment asset.” Shaktikanta Das, the head of India’s central bank, drew the same comparison between crypto trading and gambling.

Tan’s fire was trained on the capital flowing into AI labs that keep losing money while they develop new models. OpenAI’s current annual revenue pace is about $50 billion, per Bloomberg.

That level of revenue, in Tan’s view, demonstrates the model can function, not that profits are guaranteed. The same figure stoked fears over OpenAI’s revenue gap last week.

Tan’s next analogy came from the amusement arcade. Businesses, he said, are pouring cash into AI “tokens” — the text units that AI services bill for — which have nothing to do with cryptocurrency tokens.

“When you are a kid you go to a video arcade, you play. Your parents give you $10 of tokens, you finish it in 10 minutes and you haven’t learned anything. That’s what happening in enterprises today,” Tan said.

Well well well. Well.
Bloomberg: Broadcom CEO Likens Many AI Investors to Casino Gamblers
and more…
Broadcom’s Tan said AI model developers need to find customers that can generate returns from deploying the technology, rather than relying on users who are now “wasting money”…

— Cassandra Unchained (@michaeljburry) October 12, 2026

Broadcom Sticks With Its $230 Billion AI Chip Forecast

Even with those warnings, Tan is not wagering against the boom. Broadcom’s September outlook put AI chip sales at about $58 billion for fiscal 2026, then roughly $115 billion for 2027 and $230 billion for 2028.

Hock Tan, per The Standard, told the audience that demand would exceed supply for at least two more years. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, sharing the stage, predicted hardware would remain scarce for two to three years.

What could get in the way?

The money, according to Hock Tan — not chips, memory or power.

Firmus Grid, an Australian data center firm backed by Nvidia, called off a planned $5.5 billion share sale.

Broadcom’s stock slid nearly 4% last Thursday during an AI stock selloff over OpenAI’s revenue.

At the market open, it was down almost 2%, trading at $356.28 at the time of writing.