Hello and welcome to Broadcom's Inc. 1st Quarter, 5th of 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I will turn the call over to GU, head of Investor Relations of Broadcom Inc. You may begin. Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Joining me on today's call are HOC-10, President and CEO, Kirsten Spears, Chief Financial Officer, and Charlie Kowaz, President, Semiconductor Solutions Group. Broadcom distributed a press release and financial tables after the market closed, describing our financial performance for the first quarter of fiscal year 2024. If you did not receive a copy, you may obtain the information from the Investor section of Broadcom's website at broadcom.com. This conference call is being webcast live, and an audio replay of the call can be accessed for one year through the Investor section of Broadcom's website. During the prepared comments, HOC and Kirsten will be providing details of our first quarter fiscal year 2024 results, guidance for our fiscal year 2024, as well as commentary regarding the business environment. We'll take questions after the end of our prepared comments. Please refer to our press release today and our recent filings with the SEC for information on the specific risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements made on this call.
In addition to U.S. gap reporting, Broadcom reports certain financial measures on a non-gap basis. A reconciliation between gap and non-gap measures is included and enabled attached to today's press release. Comments made during today's call will primarily refer to our non-gap financial results. I'll now turn the call over to HOC. Thank you, Gee. And thank you everyone for joining us today. In our fiscal Q1 2024, consolidated net revenue was $12 billion. Up 34 percent year on year, as revenue included 10 and a half weeks of contribution from VMware. In VMware, consolidated revenue was 11 percent year on year. Semiconductor solutions revenue increased 4 percent year on year to 7.4 billion, and infrastructure software revenue grew 153 percent year on year to 4.6 billion. With respect to infrastructure software, revenue contribution from consolidating VMware drove a sequential jump in revenue by 132 percent. We expect continued strong bookings at VMware will accelerate revenue growth through the rest of fiscal 2024. In semiconductors, AI revenue quadruple year on year to $2.3 billion during the quarter, more than offsetting the current cyclical that slowdown in enterprise and telcos.
Now let me give you more color on our two reporting segments. Starting with software. Q1, software segment revenue of 4.6 billion was up 156 percent year on year, and included 2.1 billion in revenue contribution from VMware. Consolidated bookings in software grew sequentially from less than 600 million to 1.8 billion in Q1, and is expected to grow to over 3 billion in Q2. Revenue from VMware will grow double digit percentage sequentially quarter over quarter through the rest of the fiscal year. This is simply a result of our strategy with VMware. We are focused on upselling customers, particularly those who are already running their compute workloads with vSphere virtualization tools to upgrade to VMware Cloud Foundation, otherwise branded as VCF. VCF is the complete software stack integrating compute, storage and networking that virtualizes and modernizes our customers' data centers. This on-prem self-service cloud platform provides our customers a complement and an alternative to public cloud. And in fact, on a VM explore last August, VMware and Vidia entered into a partnership called VMware Private AI Foundation, which enables VCF to run GPUs.
现在让我更详细地介绍一下我们的两个报告部门。首先是软件部门。Q1的软件部门收入达到46亿美元,同比增长156%,其中包括来自VMware的21亿美元的收入贡献。软件的整体预订额从不到6亿美元的Q1逐步增长到18亿美元,并预计将在Q2增长至30亿美元以上。来自VMware的收入将在财政年度的其余时间内连续每个季度以两位数百分比增长。这仅仅是我们与VMware合作的策略的结果。我们专注于向客户推销产品,特别是那些已经使用vSphere虚拟化工具运行计算工作负载的客户,让他们升级到品牌为VCF的VMware Cloud Foundation。VCF是完整的软件堆栈,集成了计算、存储和网络,虚拟化并现代化了客户的数据中心。这种本地自助云平台为我们的客户提供了一个与公共云相辅相成的选择。事实上,去年八月份举行的VM探索大会上,VMware和Vidia进入了一项名为VMware Private AI Foundation的合作伙伴关系,这使VCF能够运行GPU。
This allows customers to deploy their AI models on-prem, and wherever they do business, without having to compromise on privacy and data in control of their data. And we are seeing this capability drive strong demand for VCF from enterprises seeking to run their growing AI workloads on-prem. Reflecting all these sectors for the full year, we reiterate our fiscal 2024 guidance for software revenue of $20 billion. Turning to semiconductors. Before I give you an overall assessment of this segment, let me provide more color by end markets. Q1 networking revenue of $3.3 billion grew 46% year-on-year, representing 45% of our semiconductor revenue. This was largely driven by strong demand for our custom AI accelerators at our two hyperscale customers. This strength extends beyond AI accelerators. Our latest generation, KamaHawk 5800G switches, thought to, internet nicks, retirement, DSPs, and optical components are experiencing strong demand at hyperscale customers, as well as large-scale enterprises deploying AI data centers.
For fiscal 2024, given continuous strength of AI networking demand, we now expect networking revenue to grow over 35% year-on-year compared to our prior guidance for 30% annual growth. Moving on to wireless. Q1 wireless revenue of $2 billion decreased 1% sequentially and declined 4% year-on-year, representing 27% of semiconductor revenue. As you all may know, the engagement with our North American customer continues to be very deep strategic and of course multi-year. Then in fiscal 2024, helped by content increases, we reiterate our previous guidance for wireless revenue to be flat year-on-year.
Next, our Q1 service storage connectivity revenue was $887 million or 12% of semiconductor revenue down 29% year-on-year. We are seeing wicked demand in the first half, but expect recovery in the second half. Accordingly, we are revising our outlook for fiscal 2024 service storage revenue to decline in the mid-20% year-on-year compared to prior guidance for high teens-percented decline year-on-year. On broadband, Q1 revenue declined 23% year-on-year to $940 million and represented 30% of semiconductor revenue. We are seeing a cyclical trough this year for broadband as telco spending continues to weaken and do not expand improvement until late in the year.
And accordingly, we are revising our outlook for fiscal 2024 broadband revenue to be down 30% year-on-year from our prior guidance of down mid-tins year-on-year. And finally, Q1 industrial resales of $215 million declined 6% year-on-year. Since fiscal 2024, we continue to expand industrial resales to be down high single-digit year-upon-year. And in summary, we are stronger than expected growth from AI, more than offsetting the cyclical weakness in broadband and service storage. Q1 semiconductor revenue grew 4% year-over-year to $7.4 billion. Turning to fiscal 2024, we reiterate our guidance for semiconductor solution revenue to be up mid-to-high single-digit percentage year-on-year.
I know we told you in December our revenue from AI would be 25% of our full-year semiconductor revenue. We now expect revenue from AI to be much stronger, representing some 35% of semiconductor revenue at over $10 billion. And this more than offset weaker than expected demands in broadband and service storage. So for fiscal 2024, in summary, we reiterate our guidance for consolidated revenue to be $50 billion, which represents 40% year-on-year growth. And we reiterate our full-year adjusted EBITDA guidance of 60%. Before I turn this call over to Kirsten, who will provide more details of our financial performance this quarter.
Let me just highlight that Broadcom recently published its fourth annual ESG report available on a corporate citizenship sign, which discusses the company's sustainability initiatives. As a global technology leader, we recognize Broadcom's responsibility to connect our customers, employees, and communities. Through our product and technology innovation and operational excellence, we remain committed to this mission. Kirsten. Thank you, Hawk. Let me now provide additional detail on our Q1 financial performance, which was the 14 week quarter, and included 10 and a half weeks of contribution from VMware. Consolidated revenue was $12 billion for the quarter, up 34% from a year ago. Excluding the contribution from VMware, Q1 revenue increased 11% year-on-year. This margins were 75.4% of revenue in the quarter. Operating expenses were $2.2 billion, and R&D was $1.4 billion, both up year-on-year, primarily due to the contribution from VMware. Q1 operating income, including VMware, was $6.8 billion and was up 26% from a year ago, with operating margin at 57% of revenue. The transition costs of $226 million in Q1, operating profit of $7.1 billion was up 30% from a year ago, with operating margin of 59% of revenue. Adjusted EBITDA with $7.2 billion or 60% of revenue. This figure excludes $139 million of depreciation. Now a review of the P&L for our two segments, starting with semiconductor. Revenue for a semiconductor solution segment was $7.4 billion and represented 62% of total revenue in the quarter.
This was up 4% year-on-year. Gross margins for a semiconductor solution segment were approximately 67% down 190 basis points year-on-year, driven primarily by product mix within our semiconductor and market. Operating expenses increased 8% year-on-year to 865 million, reflecting a 14-week quarter, resulting in semiconductor operating margins of 56%.
Now moving on to our infrastructure software segment. Revenue for infrastructure software was $4.6 billion, up 153% year-on-year, primarily due to the contribution of VMware and represented 38% of revenue. Gross margins for infrastructure software were 88% in the quarter, and operating expenses were $1.3 billion in the quarter, resulting in infrastructure software operating margin of 59%. Excluding transition costs, operating margin was 64%.
Moving on to cash flow. Free cash flow in the quarter was $4.7 billion and represented 39% of revenues off a higher revenue base. Excluding restructuring and integration spend of $658 million, free cash flows were 45% of revenue. We spent $122 million on capital expenditures. Day sales outstanding were 41 days in the first quarter, compared to 31 days in the fourth quarter, on higher accounts receivable due to the VMware acquisition.
The accounts receivable we brought on from VMware has payment terms of 60 days, unlike Broadcom's standard 30 days. We ended the first quarter with inventory of $1.9 billion, up 1% sequentially. We continued to remain disciplined on how we manage inventory across the ecosystem. We ended the first quarter with $11.9 billion of cash and $75.9 billion of gross debt.
The weighted average coupon rate and years to maturity of our 48 billion in fixed rate debt is 3.5% and 8.4 years respectively. The weighted average coupon rate and years to maturity of our 30 billion in floating rate debt is 6.6% and 3 years respectively. During the quarter, we repaid $934 million of fixed rate debt that came due.
This week, we repaid $2 billion of our floating rate debt and we intend to maintain this quarterly repayment of debt throughout fiscal 2024. Turning to capital allocation. In the quarter, we paid stockholders $2.4 billion of cash dividends based on a quarterly common stock cash dividend to $5.25 per share. We executed on our plan to complete our remaining share buyback authorization. We repurchased $7.2 billion of our common stock and eliminated $1.1 billion of common stock for taxes due on investing of employee equity, resulting in the repurchase and elimination of approximately $7.7 million AVGO shares.
To help you with modeling share count, the weighted effect of the 54 million share issued for the VMware acquisition resulted in a sequential increase in Q1 to $478 million, with the Q2 non-gaptiluted share count expected to increase to approximately $492 million as the shares issued are fully weighted in the second quarter. Now onto guidance. Regardless of the updated dynamics of our semiconductor and software segments, Hock, discussed, we choose to reiterate our guidance for fiscal year 2024, consolidated revenue of $50 billion and adjusted the BEDOT of 60%.
With regard to VMware in February, we signed a definitive agreement to divest the end user computing decision with the transaction expected to close in 2024 subject to customary closing conditions including regulatory approvals. The EUC division has been classified as discontinued operations in our Q1 financials. We have decided to retain the carbon black business and merge carbon black with Symantec to form the enterprise security group. The impact on revenue and profitability is not significant. That concludes my prepared remarks. Operator, please open up the call for questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask the question, please press star 11 on your telephone, and then wait to hear your name announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. We ask that you limit yourself to one question only. Please stand by while we compile Q&A roster.
Our first question comes from the line of Hosh Kumar with Piper Sandler. Your line is open. Yeah, thank you, Hosh. Once again, tremendous results and tremendous activity that you guys are benefiting from an AI. But my question was on software. I think if I heard you correctly, Hush, you mentioned that your software bookings will rise quite dramatically to $3 billion in 2Q. I was hoping that you could explain to us why it would rise almost 100% up if my math is correct in 2Q over 1Q. Is it something simple or is it something that you guys are doing from a strategy angle that's making this happen?
As I indicated, with the acquisition of VMware, we're very focused on upselling and helping customers not just buy but deploy this private cloud. What we call virtual private cloud solution or platform on-prem data centers. It has been very successful so far. And I agree, early innings still at this point. We just have close on the deal, what we close on the deal late November and we are now much early much. So we are the benefit of at least three months. But we have been very prepared to launch and focus on this push initiative on private cloud, VCS. And the results have been very much what we expect it to be, which is very, very successful. Thank you, Hosh. Thank you. Please stand by for our next question.
Our next question comes from the line of Parliament Serb with JP Morgan. Your line is open. Yeah, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Hosh, on the AI outlook being revised from greater than 7.5 billion, I think, last quarter to 10 billion plus this quarter. As you mentioned, AI compute pulls your ASICs, but it also pulls your networking, optical, PCIe connectivity solutions as well. So you can just help us understand, like, of that 2.5 billion increase in outlook, is it stronger AI ASIC demand, stronger networking, stronger optical, et cetera. But more importantly, are you also seeing a similar acceleration in your Ford ASIC design wind pipeline as well? There's a lot of questions and a lot of information you want me to discuss. Let's take them one at a time, shall we?
Yeah, they increase. As we have said before, I've been shown before, is it roughly two thirds, one thirds or 70, 13, which is AI accelerators, which are custom ASIC AI accelerators with a couple of hyperscalers compared to the other components, which I collectively consider as networking components. And it's about 70, 30 percent makes, and that increase of almost $3 billion that you mentioned is a similar combination. And then are you seeing a similar acceleration on the Ford design wind pipeline and customer engagements? I have indicated I only have two. Really only have two. Seriously, I don't count anybody. I do not go into production as a real customer at this point. Okay. Thanks, Bob. Thanks. Please stand by for our next question.
Our next question comes from the line of Vivet Aya with Bank of American Securities. Shilani Colson. Thank you for taking my question. Hawk, again, on the over 10 billion for AI, is this still a supply constrained number or do you think that this is kind of a very project driven numbers that's not really supplied that gates it? So if you were to get let's say increased supply, could there be upside? And then kind of part B of that is on the switching side, have you already started to see benefits from the 51 terabit per second switches? Is that something that comes along later? Like what is the contribution of 51T to the switching upside that you mentioned for this year?
Yeah, no. I would have, Tomahawk 5 is going great guns. Now it's not driven unlike in the past, Tomah 3, Tomah 4 by traditional scale out in hyperscalers on the cloud environment. This is all largely coming from AI scaling out of AI that data centers. The building of larger and larger clusters to enable generative AI computing functionality and you're going for bigger and bigger pipes. And the Tomahawk 5, 51 terabit is a perfect solution and we're seeing a lot of demand. And in many cases, we are, basically they are surpassing the rate of adoption that we've previously thought. So it is a very good solution in connecting GPUs. And with respect to AI accelerators where I think you are focusing on is that a constraint on supply chain, we do get enough lead time out of our hyperscale customers that we do not have a supply chain constraint. Thank you. Thank you. Please stand by for our next question.
Our next question comes from the line of space. You're right. I'm with Bernstein research. The line is open. Hi guys. Thanks for taking my question. I had a question on the core software business. So you said VMware for the two months that was in there was 2.1 billion. We could put the rest of the software CACinetic and brokeade at like two and a half almost to be up a 25% sequentially and almost 40% year over year. I guess the question is do I have my math right? And if so, how can that be? What's going on in the core business? And how should we be thinking about the growth of the core business in VMware as we go to the year? Is it VMware so 12 billion?
Yeah. Don't get too excited about that. Don't get too excited about that. I think it's certain products contracts we obtain. But it's very strong contract renewals in the older from old Broadcom contracts, especially mainframes were very strong as was some of our other distributors of our platform. So that has also accelerated. But that's not a style of this show, Stacy. What this show is the accelerating bookings and backlog we accumulating on VMware. Okay. So VMware is still running it like an 11 or 12 billion dollar run rate benefit. So that sounds like that should accelerate. So the overall for VMware should be more than the 12 billion that you talked about. So the core business, the strength of the core, that was kind of a one time which would model that kind of like falling off because you still got the overall software at 20. Correct. Got it. Okay. Thanks. Please stand by for our next question.
Our next question comes from the line of Aaron Rakers with Wells Fargo. The line is open. Yeah. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to ask kind of continuing on the VMware discussion a little bit, you know, Hawk, now that you've had the asset, you know, for a little while, I'm curious of how you, how the go-to market strategy looks with VMware relative to the prior software acquisitions that you've done. What I'm really getting at is kind of like, you know, how have you kind of thought about the segmentation of the customer base of VMware? Are you, I know there's been some discussion around your channel engagements, you know, legacy VMware channel in the past. So I'm just kind of curious of how you've been managing that go-to market. Oh, I think, no, we haven't had it for that long to be honest. It's like three months, but about three months. But yeah, it's, it's what, and it seems to be, no, no, there are kings to be, walk out, but things seem to be progressing very well as much as we had hoped it would, because where we are focusing our go-to market, and more than go-to market, where we are focusing our resources on don't just go-to market, but on engineering, engineering a very improved VCF stack, which we have, and selling it out there, and being able to then support it and even in the process get help customers deploy and start to really make it stand up in your data centers. All that focus is on the largest, I would say, 2000 strategic customers. These are guys who want to still have significant distributed data center on-brand. You know, many of our customers is looking at a hybrid situation, not only use the word ears too loosely. Basically, a lot of these customers have some very legacy, but critical mainframe. That's an old platform, not growing, except it's still vital. Then what they have to modernizing workloads, called today and in the future, is they really have a choice, which they are taking both angles, of running a lot of applications in data centers on-prem, distributed data centers on-prem, which can handle these modernized workloads, while at the same time, because of elastic demand, to be able to also put some of these applications into public cloud. Today's environment, most of these customers do not have an on-prem data center that resembles what's in the cloud, which is very high availability, very low latency, highly resilient, which is one we are offering with VMware Cloud Foundation of this year. It exactly replicates what they get in a public cloud. And they love it. Now, three months, and we are seeing it in the level of bookings we are generating over the last three months. Thank you. Thank you. Please stand by for our next question.
Our next question comes from the line of Chris Dangley with Citi. Yolana's open. Hey, thanks, gang. Let me ask a question. Hey, Hox, just a question on the AI upside in terms of a customer perspective. How much of the upside is coming from new versus existing customers? And then how do you see the customer base going forward? I think it's going to broaden. We know how you like to price. So if you do get a bunch of new customers for these products, could there be some better pricing and better margins as well? Hopefully, I'm not listening to the call. Chris, thanks for this question. Love it. And perhaps let me try to perhaps give you a sense how we think of the AI market, the new generative AI market, so to speak, using it very loosely and generically as well. We see it as two end mark, two broad segments. One segment is hyperscalers, especially very large hyperscalers with huge, huge consumer subscriber base. You probably can guess who this few people are. Very large subscriber base and very, almost infinite amount of data. And our model is getting subscribers to keep using this platform they have. And through that, be able to generate a better experience for not only the subscribers, but a better advertising opportunity for their advertising clients. It's a great ROI as we are seeing, it's a ROI that comes very quickly. And the investment continues vigorously with that segment, comprising very few players. But we will use subscriber base, but with the scale to invest a lot. And here, ASICs, custom silicon, custom AI accelerators makes plenty of sense. And that's where we focus that attention on. They also buy as a scale out those AI accelerators through clusters, increasing large clusters. Because of the way the models are running, the foundation models run, and large language models need to generate those parameters. They buy a lot of networking together with one in comparison, obviously, to the value of AI accelerators we sell. The network working site while growing is small percentage compared to the size of the value of their accelerators. That's one big segment we have. The other segment we have, which is smaller, is the enterprise. One I broadly call enterprise segment in AI. Here you're talking about companies, large, not so large, but large, who wants to do, who have AI initiatives going on. You know, all these big news and hype about AI, being the savior to productivity and all that. It gets all these companies on multiple, on their own initiatives. And here, in a short of going to public cloud, they try to run it on prem. If they try to run it on prem, they take extended silicon for AI accelerators as much as possible. And here in terms of the AI accelerator, we don't have a market. That's a merchant silicon market. But in the networking site, as they buy it together with their data centers, they do buy all those out networking components, beginning with switches, routers even through people like the RISTAs 7800, but switches for sure, and the various other components I mentioned. And that's a different sense market that we have. So it's an interesting mix and we see both. Thanks a lot, Hark. Thank you. Please stand by for our next question.
Our next question comes from the line of call, Ackerman with BNP, Parabas. Your line is open. Yes, thank you. Hark, weakness in broadband, server and storage customers is understandable given what your purists have said this earnings season. But perhaps you could speak to the backlog visibility you have with your customers in those markets that would indicate those markets could begin to order again and see the sequential growth in the second half of your calendar year. Thank you. You're correct. We are, as I say, we are almost like near the trough. This year, 24, first half for sure, will be the trough. Second half, 24, don't own yet. But tell you what, we have 52 week lead time, as you know. We're very disciplined sticking to it. And based on that, we are seeing bookings lately, significantly are from bookings a year ago. Thank you. Please stand by for our next question.
Our next question comes from the line of Christopher rolling with a quahana. Thank you for the question. So, Hark, this one's for you on optical. So, our check suggests that you're vertically integrating there. You're now putting in your own drivers, TIA's. You're starting to get traction in PAM4 DSP. And I think you kind of had an early lead in 100 gig data center lasers as well. And this is, a lot of this should be on the back of AI networking that appears to be exploding here. So, I was wondering if you could help us size the market and then also talk about how fast this is growing for you. I think there may have been some clues in that one third number of the AI you gave us. But perhaps if you can kind of double click or square that for us, it would be great. Thanks. Okay.
Before you get carried away, please, in the other categories outside AI accelerators, all those things like PAM4, DSPs, optical components, re-timers. They are small compared to Tomahawk switches and Jericho routers using AI networks. And also we're in an environment where, as you all know, traditional enterprise networking is kind of also in a bit of a slowdown law. So, obviously, it's demand driven very much by AI. And that tends to push us in a line of thinking that could be very biased. Because what it is showing is that the mix and the content on networking relative to compute is very bad skew, very different from in an AI data center compared to a traditional CPU based data center. So, I don't want to get you guys all in the wrong way. But you're right, in an AI data center, there's quite a bit of content on DSPs, PAM4s, optical components and re-timers and PCI express switches. But there's still not that big overall scheme of things compared to what we sell in switches and routers. And compared to AI accelerators, they are even small. Thing in that ratio. As I said, AI revenue of 10 billion plus this year, 70% will be AI accelerators, 30%...
...the switches and routers. And the rest are the various three-timers DSP components. Because we are not unlike what you say, we're not vertically integrated in the sense we do not do the entire transceiver, the optical...
...transceiver. We don't do that. Those are manufactured typically by OEMs, contract manufacturers like InnoLite, E-optoline, guys in China. Well, those guys are much more competitive. But we provide those key components we talk about. So when you look at it that way, you can understand the kind of the weighting of the various values. Super helpful. Thank you, Hark. Thank you. Will you stand by for our next question?
The next question comes from the line of Toshi Ahari with Goldman Sachs. The line is open. Hi. Thank you for taking the question. Hark, I think we all appreciate the capabilities you have in terms of custom compute. I asked this question last quarter on the group call back. But there is one competitor, Bay Sinasia, who continues to be pretty vocal and adamant that one of the future designs at your largest customer, they may have some share. And we're picking up conflicting evidence and we're getting a bunch of investor questions. I was hoping you could address that and your confidence level and maintaining if not extending your position there. Thank you. You know, I can't stop somebody from trash talking. Okay. It's a bad say to describe it. Let the numbers speak for themselves. Please. Live it that way. And I add to it like most things we do in terms of large critical technology products, we tend to always have, as we do here, a very deep strategic and multi-year relationship with our customer. And now, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Please stand back for our next question.
Our next question comes from the line of Jay Rakesh with Mazuhu. Yalana's open. Hi, Hark. Just from the custom silicon side, obviously, you guys dominate that space. But you mentioned two customers, two customers, two, you're only two major customers. Just wondering what's really holding back other hyperscalism, you know, ramping up their custom silicon side. And on the flip side, you know, you're hearing some peers talk about custom silicon roadmaps as well. So if you could hit both, thanks. Well, number one, we don't dominate this market. Only a two. I can't be dominating it too. And number one. Number two, the second point is it takes years. It takes a lot of heavy lifting to create that custom silicon because you need to do more than just hardware or silicon to really have a solution for generative AI or even AI in trying to create those AI capabilities in your data centers. It's more than just silicon. You're doing it. You invest a lot in creating software models that works on your custom silicon that matches, you've got to match your business model in the first place, which leads to and create foundation models, which then needs to work and optimize on the custom silicon you're developing. So it's an iterative process and it's a constant evolving process even for the same customer we deal with. I mentioned that in the last call. So it takes years to really understand or be able to basically reach a point where you can say that, hey, I'm finally delivering production worthy. It's not because silicon is bad. It doesn't work well with the foundation models that the customer put in place and the software layer that works with it. The firmware, the software layer that translates into it. All that has to work. You're almost like creating an entire ecosystem in a limited basis, which we are recognized very well in X86 CPUs, but in GPUs, those kinds of AI accelerators, something still very early stage. So it takes years. And for our two customers, we have engaged for years. With one of them, we have engaged for eight years to get to this point. So it's something you have to be very patient, be very persevere and hope that everything lines up because ultimate success if you're just a silicon developer is not just dependent on you, but dependent as much even more on your partner or customer doing it. So it's just got to be patient, guys. I got the tool only so far.
And on the peers getting into that market? Who is getting to the market? Please repeat. Your talk, talk about some of your peers. Like I think NVIDIA has been talking about entering the custom silicon market. Oh, that's a silicon market. I don't comment to remain on it. All I do say is I have no interest in going into a market where we have a philosophy in running our business, Broadcom. And maybe other people have a different philosophy. Let me tell you my simple philosophy, which I've articulated over time every now and then, which is very clear to my management team and to the whole Broadcom. You do what you're good at. And you do, you keep doubling down on things you know you are better than anybody else. And you just keep doubling down because nobody else will catch up to you if you keep running in of the bank. But do not do something that you think you can do, but somebody else is doing much better job than you are. That's my philosophy. Thanks, Mark. Great. Thank you. Please stand by for our next question.
Our next question comes from the line of Matt Bramsey with TD Cola. Your line is open. Thank you very much for squeezing me in, guys. It's kind of a two-part thing on the custom silicon stuff. I guess, if some of the merchant leaders in AI, they're going to be able to do that. They were interested in some custom networking stuff from you either in switching routing. Would you consider it? And the second question is for Kirsten. The business model around custom silicon for most folks is taking our repayments up front and sell the end product at a lower gross margin, but a higher operating margin. And you guys have wrapped its massive custom business with no real impact to gross margins. So maybe you could just unpack the philosophy and the accounting about the way that you guys approach the custom silicon opportunities just from a margin perspective. Thanks, guys. I'll take that because you're asking business models. You're not asking really number crunching. So let me try to answer in this way. So there's no particular reason short of what constitutes an AI accelerator. An AI accelerator, the way it's configured now, whether it's a merchant or it's custom, has a lot – first, an AI accelerator to run foundation models very well needs not just a whole bunch of floating point multipliers to do matrix multiplication, matrix analysis on regression. That's the logic part, compute part. It comes – you have to come with access to a lot of memory, literally almost cache memory tied to it. The chip is not just a simple multiplier. It comes attached to it memory. It's almost a layered three-dimensional chip, which it is. Memory is not something we are – any of us in AI accelerators are super good at designing or building. So we buy the memory from very specialized high bandwidth memory. You all know about it. From key memory supplies, every one of us does that. So you – part of the two – to combine the two together, that's what an AI accelerator is. So even if I get very good, natural normal, a module, corporate, silicon growth margin on my compute logic chip on multipliers, there's no way I can apply that kind of add-on margin to the high bandwidth memory, which is a big part of the course of the total chip. And so naturally, by simple math, it will – that whole entire consolidated AI accelerator brings a growth margin below what a traditional silicon product we have out there. No going away from that, because you are adding on memory, even though we have to create the access, the IOs that attach it, we do not – and could not justify adding that kind of margin to memory. Nobody could for us. So it brings a natural normal margin. That's really the simple basis to it. But on the logic part of it, sure, with the kind of content, with the kind of IP and that we develop, cutting edge, to make those high density floating-point multipliers on 800 square millimeters of advanced silicon, we can commend the margin similar to our corporate growth margin. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Please, stand by for our next question.
Our next question comes from the line of Edward Snyder with Child Equity Research. The line is open. Thanks a lot. First of all, I'll just keep in one if I could, Hawk. You mentioned the second customer, but you also mentioned that it takes years of work iteratively. I mean, anybody has looked at the QPU history. I guess understands that. And you said before that it takes time to wrap it up. But maybe you could give us a little bit of color. I said phenomenal growth in your custom silicon products is much more material part of that coming from your second customer and taking account the little revenue number is the growth rate generally speaking fairly comparable. And then I had a question about VMware.
You better go on to your VMware customers. Because on the first, I don't tell about my customer individually. Sorry. Okay. Well, okay. Never mind. That's a waste of time. So closing VMware held kind of a significant shift in your software strategy from focus in the largest 1000 or so customers to well hundreds of thousands now. Why should we expect once you get through, I don't want to say the low hanging fluid of selling into the, like you mentioned, the first 1000 customers with the VCS product that your op X is a share of sales, especially in sales and marketing would start to increase.
Because that's the big leverage Broadcom has had over almost all your acquisitions in software and that seems to be changing now. Ah, we have a shift here. And it's interesting. You're right. No regard. We are spending more on go to market and support because we have a lot of customers. We have 300,000, but we stratify. So we have the strategic guys. We sell, upsell, VCA, private cloud. Very good. But a long tail of what we call smaller commercial customers, we continue to support and sell, improve versions of just the VCA, VSphere, computer utilization to improve productivity on their service.
We don't attempt to say, go build up your whole VCF. They don't have the skills, they don't have the skills to do it. But only the answer is you're right. My cost of my spend, op X spend, be it support, services, go to market, wall increase. But the difference between that and say CA, my under acquisition we did is we're growing this business very fast. And you don't have to increase your spend growing this business. So we have operating leverage through revenue growth over the next three years. Great. If I could squeeze one more in.
You mentioned several times actually in the last quarter that there were two divisions you're going to divest including carbon black and that's changed. What has changed is the market outlook kind of softens and is the weight and see or if you change your strategy and how you're going to integrate, I'm just curious why last quarter and say you probably gave it to you once and how you're keeping it. Well, we find now that we could generate more value to you, the shareholders. Soon you are, I'm just kidding. But we would generate more value to our shareholders by taking carbon blank, which is not that big and it integrating it into cement. That true by doing it, we would generate much better value to our shareholders than taking a one-shot divestiture on this asset, not particularly large to begin with. Great.
Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, through the interest of time, I would now like to turn the call back over to GU for closing remarks. Thank you, operator. In closing, we would like to highlight our Broadcom enabling AI in infrastructure investor meeting on Wednesday, March 20, 2024 at 9 a.m. Pacific, 12 p.m. Eastern time. Charlie Coas, president of Broadcom's semiconductor solutions group and several general managers will present on Broadcom's merchant silicon portfolio. The live webcast and replay of the investor meeting will be available at investors.broadcom.com.
Broadcom currently plans to report its earnings for the second quarter of fiscal 24 after close of market on Wednesday, June 12, 2024. A public webcast of Broadcom's earnings conference call will follow at 2 p.m. Pacific time. That will conclude our earnings call today. Thank you all for joining. Operator, you may end the call. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Thank you.