European Commission officials asked cloud providers how easily they could replace VMware, a step that could precede a formal case over Broadcom's licensing changes.
Broadcom's AI semiconductor revenue reached $16.7 billion in its fiscal third quarter, and it forecast $21.7 billion for the fourth quarter as custom accelerator demand grew.
Broadcom is pitching VMware Cloud Foundation as the place to run inference and AI agents in-house, with token-cost tools, 150-plus runnable models and agent governance.
The disk library behind Azure Migrate, Nutanix Move and Red Hat's migration toolkit vanished from public download, and Broadcom later said it was never a customer entitlement.
The order keeps the Commission's probe into VMware bundling, pricing and lock-in on track and, citing EU case law, says advice from in-house lawyers qualified outside the EU is not shielded.
The memorandum pairs high-bandwidth memory for Broadcom's AI accelerators with Samsung 2nm chipmaking and packaging, but it is a statement of intent, not a firm order.
The bank says 70% of its global infrastructure already runs on VCF, a regulated reference point for CIOs weighing a VMware renewal against a migration.
Apple called the multiyear agreement its largest US manufacturing commitment yet; it enables a $1.5 billion Broadcom plant expansion in Fort Collins, Colorado.
