VMware Explore: All Eyes on Approaching Broadcom Acquisition

VMWARE EXPLORE — The opening keynote of VMware Explore 2023 featured a surprise appearance by Broadcom CEO Hock Tan talking up his company’s upcoming $61 billion acquisition of VMware. He also said, upon closing, Broadcom will immediately invest $2 billion in VMware.

This week, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority gave its final blessing to the long-pending transaction. And Broadcom expects to close the purchase on Oct. 30.

Tan’s comments were via video and he was in the audience during the opening keynote.

Broadcom’s Hock Tan

“I’ve said this before and it’s worth repeating. The proposed combination of Broadcom and VMware is pro-competitive and will deliver great value,” Tan said during VMware Explore 2023. “It will advance the vision of workloads running in a multicloud environment. Our combined customers and partners will have access to a stable, growing and powerful multicloud platform underpinned by world-class security, and enabling them to accelerate innovation for all their applications.”

VMware Explore: Investing in VMware Products, Services

Once this transaction closes, Broadcom will focus on investing in VMware products and services, Tan said.

“In fact, Broadcom will immediately invest an additional $2 billion a year to better unlock customer value,” he said. “Half of that investment will be focused on R&D. The other half will focus on helping to accelerate deployment of VMware solutions through VMware and partner professional services. Broadcom will invest in growing VMware’s partner ecosystem to help them grow their own businesses and better support our mutual customers.”

In the meantime, the transaction is progressing well, Broadcom is in the advanced stages of regulatory review and “we’re working very well with the regulators,” Tan said.

“We are highly confident this transaction will close within Broadcom’s fiscal 2023,” he said. “The potential of what Broadcom and VMware can do together for customers is just simply enormous.”

VMware’s Raghu Raghuram

Raghu Raghuram, VMware’s CEO, said Broadcom announcing the acquisition in May 2022 is one of the most important milestones of the last 25 years for his company.

“Now, over the last year, I have spent a lot of time with [Tan] and I know that he’s spent a lot of time with all of you, meeting hundreds of you in one-on-one and group meetings,” he said. “And I can tell you today that he’s even more excited by the potential of VMware than he was last May.”

Scroll through our slideshow above for more from VMware Explore 2023.