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Applied Materials is the largest semiconductor wafer fabrication equipment manufacturer in the world. It has a broad portfolio spanning nearly every corner of the WFE ecosystem. Applied Materials holds leading market share in deposition, which entails the layering of new materials on semiconductor wafers. It is more exposed to general-purpose logic chips made at integrated device manufacturers and foundries. It counts the largest chipmakers in the world as customers, including TSMC, Intel, and Samsung.

Broadcom is one of the largest semiconductor companies in the world and has also expanded into infrastructure software. Its semiconductors primarily serve computing and networking, with custom AI accelerators now accounting for the bulk of the business. It is primarily a fabless designer, but holds some manufacturing in-house, such as for its best-of-breed film bulk acoustic resonator filters that sell into the Apple iPhone. In software, it sells virtualization, infrastructure, and security software to large enterprises, financial institutions, and governments. Broadcom is the product of consolidation. Its businesses are an amalgamation of former companies like legacy Broadcom and Avago Technologies in chips, as well as VMware, Brocade, CA Technologies, and Symantec in software.