Broadcom's stock price more than doubled in 2024, with its best month ever coming in December after the company's earnings report. It was a big year for silicon in Silicon Valley — but a brutal one for the company most responsible for the area's moniker. Intel, the 56-year-old chipmaker co-founded by industry pioneers Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce and legendary investor Arthur Rock, had its worst year since going public in 1971, losing 61% of its value.
The chip conglomerate run by CEO Hock Tan and headquartered in Palo Alto, California, about 15 miles from Intel's Santa Clara campus, saw Broadcom's stock price soar 111% in 2024 as of Monday's close, its best performance ever. The driving force behind the diverging narratives was artificial intelligence. Broadcom rode the AI train, while Intel largely missed it. The changing fortunes of the two chipmakers underscores the fleeting nature of leadership in the tech industry and how a few key decisions can result in hundreds of billions — or even trillions — of dollars in market cap shifts. Broadcom supplies essential networking gear that large server clusters need to tie thousands of AI chips together. It also makes essential networking gear that large server clusters need to tie thousands of AI chips together. Within AI, Broadcom has largely been overshadowed by Nvidia. Despite having a lower profile, Broadcom's accelerator chips, which the company calls XPUs, have become a key piece of the AI ecosystem. 'Why it's really shooting up is because they're talking about AI, AI, AI, AI,' Eric Ross, chief investment strategist at Cascend, told CNBC's'Squawk Box' earlier this month. Intel, which for decades was the dominant U.S. chipmaker, has been mostly shut out of AI. Its server chips lag far behind Nvidia's, and the company has also lost market share to longtime rival AMD. 'I think someone more innovative might have seen the AI wave coming,' Paul Argenti, professor of management at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, said. Broadcom is now worth about $1.1 trillion and is the eighth U.S