> Broadcom has become wealthy by being Google's TPU hardware partner...

Kinda, but not exactly.

Broadcom cornered the enterprise infra and security market in the late 2010s and early 2020s after acquiring CA Technologies, BMC (EDIT: Did NOT acquire them, they were considering it back in 2018 but decided against it and KKR ended up acquiring them), Symantec (which they bought instead of BMC), and VMWare and were able to make a strong cybersecurity story during the late 2010s cybersecurity and SaaS boom.

That gave them plenty of cashflow that helped subsidize their hardware business when hardware was not viewed as hot as it is today.

Additionally, Broadcom is GCP's marquee customer and has been for a little under a decade so they were able to make a sweetheart deal where all that software businesses at Broadcom would be exclusively using GCP and in return GCP would working with Broadcom to design it's silicon and source infra needed for their DC buildouts.

Ironically, the DoJ blocking Broadcom's acquisition of Qualcomm was the best thing it ever could have done for Broadcom, because it gave Broadcom the dry powder to dominate the Enterprise SaaS and build a strong niche in the cybersecurity space.

> piles of money to extort money out of the software industry

From personal experience, executives and leadership who started off in the electronics and hardware industry are much more vicious and cutthroat than their peers who started in software.

Working in an industry that historically had to deal with high commodification, low margins, and long tail sales leads to leadership that can execute. Additionally, no one climbs the leadership ladder without having spent years as a line-level engineer, but that's true for software as well to an extent.

Edit: can't reply

> Did they acquire also BMC?

Nope.

Broadcom was considering acquiring them in 2018 but decided not to go through with the opportunity and KKR jumped in.