Broadcom’s conglomerate journey + Microsoft’s new addition

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Editor's note: Broadcom wants to be a technology conglomerate. The chipmaker has been strategically adding several potentially promising companies to its portfolio of businesses over the years to fuel growth. In 2017, Broadcom even tried to buy rival Qualcomm for $105 billion but the deal was blocked by the US government owing to national security concerns since Broadcom was a foreign (Singaporean) company at the time. (Broadcom has moved its headquarters to San Jose, California, since then.) Two weeks ago, after days of speculation, Broadcom announced it was acquiring VMware in a massive $61 billion cash-and-stock deal. Last year, VMware was spun out from Dell, which had originally acquired the company when it bought EMC in 2016. VMware develops market-leading tools used by developers to build and run virtual machines. According to research firm Gartner, VMware held the highest market share in the global virtualization infrastructure software market in 2021, at 72%, and recorded a revenue of $5.9 billion. CEO Hock Tan is on a mission to transform the company into an enterprise software player through multiple billion-dollar acquisitions.  Broadcom's acquisition of …