Broadcom CEO calls AI ‘a casino’ after co-founder dumped $750 million

When Broadcom CEO Hock Tan called AI investors gamblers behaving “like they are in a casino” on Monday, he failed to mention that his company’s own co-founder has sold roughly $750 million worth of AI stock to AI investors this year.

Tan told a Singapore conference on Monday that AI investors are behaving like gamblers who “set very extreme expectations only to find out that it’s almost like they are in a casino.”

He also compared AI spending to arcade tokens, saying, “Your parents give you $10 of tokens, you finish it in 10 minutes and you haven’t learned anything.”

Meanwhile, Broadcom co-founder and director Henry Samueli, who chaired the company’s board of directors until June 2026, spent his year dumping roughly $750 million of stock. If Tan’s casino framing is accurate, Samueli has acted like the house operator raking chips off the table.

Tan spoke this week at the DBS Asia Future Forward Conference, on a panel with Intel’s CEO. According to Bloomberg, he said many AI investors “have no clue what they are investing in.” 

Fortunately, many of these ostensibly clueless investors are buying AVGO, Broadcom’s Nasdaq-listed common stock, from his co-founder.

Read more: Credit default swaps forecast AI bankruptcies

Broadcom co-founder Henry Samueli gets rich selling AI stock

Samueli has filed three Form 4s in 2026 worth approximately $250 million apiece.

His March filing covers 781,967 shares sold at a weighted average price of $319.71 apiece. In June, he sold 654,241 shares at $382.13. Lastly, in September, he sold 702,190 shares at $356.04.

In total, he sold 2,138,398 shares for about $750 million.

Tan is also getting rich himself while likening some of his investors to Las Vegas tourists. He personally sold 70,000 shares on January 6 for over $24 million.

As Broadcom insiders got rich, common shareholders have fallen behind their benchmarks.

Broadcom, an AI stock highly dependent on AI capital spending, has trailed the S&P 500 index by 11 percentage points year-to-date, and the Nasdaq 100 index by 18 points.

In its third quarter earnings report, the company admitted that sales of AI semiconductors and infrastructure for AI data centers generated the majority of its total revenue.

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