Epoch AI estimates compute in Broadcom’s TPU shipments doubled in a quarter
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Epoch AI estimates that the TPU chips Broadcom shipped between May and early August delivered about twice as much compute as in the previous quarter. Epoch derived the figure from Broadcom’s revenue; it is not a shipment volume reported by the company.
Epoch AI, which researches the development of AI, published its estimate on 4 November and announced it on X the following day. Venkat Somala and Josh You calculated that the TPU chips Broadcom shipped in the third quarter of its 2026 fiscal year delivered compute equivalent to about 1.97 million Nvidia H100 GPUs. In the previous quarter the figure was 0.96 million. In the three quarters before that, growth was 2–22 per cent per quarter.
The TPU is a chip designed by Google for AI computing. Broadcom handles the chip’s physical design and supply chain, such as sourcing memory and manufacturing with TSMC.
The H100 equivalent (H100e) shows how many H100s’ worth of compute the chips deliver. Epoch compares the chips’ stated peak 8-bit performance. The authors said the conversion is indicative, because the chips differ in memory and software. It is most accurate for model training.
More powerful chips drove compute growth
Epoch estimates that unit volumes rose about 65 per cent to roughly 800,000 chips. Compute grew faster because production shifted to more powerful chips. TPU v7 now makes up the vast majority of shipments and delivers about 2.5 times the performance of the v6e. TPU v8i, which entered production during the quarter, is about 2.2 times as powerful as the v7 and accounted for an estimated 11 per cent of compute.
The table shows Epoch’s median estimate by quarter. The figures are estimates, not shipment volumes reported by Broadcom.
| Broadcom fiscal quarter | Estimate (H100e) |
|---|---|
| Q1 FY25 | 326,753 |
| Q2 FY25 | 514,633 |
| Q3 FY25 | 696,508 |
| Q4 FY25 | 851,340 |
| Q1 FY26 | 872,392 |
| Q2 FY26 | 961,591 |
| Q3 FY26 | 1,965,979 |
Source: Epoch AI. The 90 per cent confidence interval for Q3 FY26 is 1,567,748–2,350,392.
The estimate rests on revenue
Broadcom reported $16.7 billion in AI semiconductor revenue for the quarter. Epoch said that CEO Hock Tan told the earnings call that custom accelerators made up 73 per cent of it, about $12.2 billion. Epoch estimates that 92 per cent of this came from TPUs. It converts the sum into units using an estimated chip price based on manufacturing cost. The figures cover shipments to Google and Anthropic.
The estimate is particularly uncertain for shipments to Anthropic. In 2025 Broadcom spoke of complete racks sold to Anthropic, priced to include not only chips but also CPUs, networking and cooling, for example. Epoch reported that Tan said on the June earnings call: ‘No racks. It is all a chip business only.’
Epoch assigns a 25 per cent probability that Anthropic’s revenue was booked at rack value. This lowered the median estimate from 2.05 million to 1.97 million. If Anthropic’s share of TPU revenue had been 40 per cent and its revenue had been booked at about $25,000 per chip, Anthropic would have received about 180,000 TPU v7s rather than 340,000. Shipments for the quarter would then have been about 1.67 million H100e, 15 per cent below the median. The rack price is a SemiAnalysis estimate; Epoch’s own price estimate for a TPU v7 chip is about $13,000.