The Financial Times reported this morning that SASAC, which supervises China's state-owned enterprises, spent recent weeks surveying how many Broadcom switches sit in state-controlled data centres, naming informal guidance to scale back as a possible next step. Reuters restated it at 05:09 GMT and could not verify it. Broadcom's fiscal 2025 revenue shipped to China is 17.5% of the total, and it is the one figure Broadcom's annual report tells a reader not to use — for a product line Broadcom reports no revenue for at all.
Nothing has been issued: two people described a survey, no notice or dated guidance exists, and Reuters could reach neither Broadcom nor the commission. A second question is reported alongside it — whether Broadcom bundled products or imposed large purchase requirements "for up to tens of thousands of switch chips" in a way that kept H3C and Ruijie from Huawei's chips.
The 90 per cent arrives in three incompatible sentences
The fastest-travelling figure today is not one number. The FT has the penetration rate of Broadcom switches among state-owned companies as high as 90 per cent; Reuters renders it as as much as 90% of the equipment in use; a third wire has 90% of the networking equipment at some state-owned companies. Penetration among companies, share of all equipment, share of networking equipment at some of them: three different quantities, each resting on one person's account of a survey nobody has published.
China's share of Broadcom halved because the rest of the company doubled
Revenue by country appears once in Broadcom's annual report, in a note. China with Hong Kong was $11,155 million of $63,887 million in fiscal 2025, or 17.46%, against $11,533 million of $35,819 million two years earlier. The China line has fallen $378 million since fiscal 2023, down 3.3%, while revenue overall grew 78.4% and China's share went from 32.2% to 17.5% — VMware arriving in the denominator, not anything in China.
Then the note disclaims itself. "For the majority of our products, title and control transfer to our customers in Penang, Malaysia", and those delivery locations are "not necessarily indicative of the geographic location of our end customers"; Broadcom believes "a substantial portion" of what ships to China ends up in devices its customers sell in America and Europe. A "substantially smaller percentage" of revenue, management says, ultimately depends on Chinese end customers.
A switch racked in a state data centre is the thing that does not get re-exported
Re-export is the mechanism the note describes. Parts ship to China, get assembled into phones, set-top boxes and broadband gear, and those devices sell in America and Europe. Which is why 17.5% overstates Broadcom's dependence on Chinese demand — and why it says nothing about a Tomahawk or Jericho part sold into a switch racked in a Chinese state-owned data centre. Silicon like that stays where it was delivered, so the shipping label and the end market are the same place. The disclaimer that deflates the headline number leaves this exposure untouched.
Broadcom's disclosure stops two levels above the line in the news
No Broadcom document carries a switching revenue figure. Two segments are reported — semiconductor solutions at $20.839 billion last quarter, infrastructure software at $8.752 billion — and the annual report names Networking Connectivity as one of five end markets while giving revenue for none of them. So the best line available is a residual of a figure that is itself not a segment: AI semiconductor revenue of $16.7 billion last quarter, appearing only in a chief executive's quote, against which the call put XPUs at 73%, leaving networking the 27% residual, about $4.51 billion. Our analysis of the quarter carries the split; the release page has the rest.
Chinese state data centres are a subset of China, itself a subset of that $4.51 billion. Nobody outside Broadcom has the share, so it can only be bounded:
| Assumed share of AI networking | Per quarter | Of the $34.8bn Q4 guide |
|---|---|---|
| 5% | $225M | 0.6% |
| 10% | $451M | 1.3% |
| 25% | $1,127M | 3.2% |
| 100%, the ceiling | $4,509M | 13.0% |
Each share is assumed and none is anyone's estimate; the assumption is the argument. The ceiling row shows where the arithmetic stops, not anything reachable, Tomahawk 6 being at "essentially every AI hyperscaler building XPUs with Broadcom, and also at those that are not". Enterprise switching sits in the non-AI semiconductor line, about $4.2 billion and flat.
The bundling question is the one nothing above bounds
An instruction to state-owned buyers is bounded by what those buyers spend, and every figure here says that is small against a $34.8 billion quarter guided to 62% AI. A finding that Broadcom tied products or required tens-of-thousands-unit purchases is bounded by no revenue geography, and today's reporting names neither the authority that would act nor a filed document. Nvidia's exclusion from state-backed facilities shows how fast procurement guidance moves without a published rule.
This reading is wrong if Broadcom's switching book leans on Chinese state buyers far harder than Broadcom leans on China — which is what 90% penetration implies on the loosest of its three readings. One line in December's annual report settles it: revenue by end market. Broadcom has never printed one.
The survey, the possible guidance, the bundling and purchase-requirement examination and the 90 per cent are a Financial Times report of 23 September 2026 sourced to people familiar with the matter; no SASAC document exists. The second and third renderings of the 90 per cent are the Reuters restatement of the same day, which states it could not verify the report or reach Broadcom or the commission, and a further wire version. Revenue by country, the two reportable segments, the five named end markets and the Penang and end-customer language come from Broadcom's fiscal 2025 annual report for the year ended 2 November 2025. Segment revenue and the fourth-quarter guide are from the September results release; AI semiconductor revenue, the XPU share and the Tomahawk 6 remark are from the earnings call, absent from the release and not a reported segment. Ours: the networking residual, every ratio, and each row of the table.
