The Fruity Cargo Cult Apple has announced a $30 billion deal with Broadcom to design chips made in the US.
According to Reuters the deal is part of Job’s Mob’s continuing effort to diversify its component supply chain and support domestic chip production, a goal shared by US president Donald Trump.
Broadcom makes wireless connectivity chips that help gadgets connect to Wi-Fi, mobile networks and Bluetooth. These are not the memory and storage chips that have become stupidly expensive during the AI boom and helped push Job’s Mob into raising prices.
Tariffs have hurt Apple too, adding billions of dollars a quarter to its costs and nudging the outfit towards onshoring more component manufacturing.
Job’s Mob wants to support American chipmaking, but it is keen to reduce its reliance on Taiwanese chipmakers, which make the processors powering iPhones, iPads and Macs.
Last month, Trump announced a $9 billion deal for Apple to buy American-made chips from Intel. The federal government had made an $8.9 billion investment in Chipzilla.
The Broadcom agreement will lead to the production of more than 15 billion chips in the US. It will let Broadcom invest $1.5 billion to expand and modernise its manufacturing facilities in Fort Collins, Colorado.
The deal is part of Job’s Mob’s August pledge to invest $600 billion through its “American Manufacturing Programme”, which is meant to drag more of its supply chain and advanced manufacturing into the US.
Apple surpreme dalek Tim Cook said: “Apple and Broadcom have a long history together, and this new phase of our partnership further accelerates our commitment to American manufacturing and innovation.”
Cook told the Wall Street Journal in June that price hikes on its products are “unavoidable” because of rising memory and storage chip costs triggered by the AI boom.
“We’re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we’ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable,” Cook said.
