On the surface, chip giant Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO) seems to have just turned in a lackluster quarterly performance as a new era of artificial intelligence (AI) supercharges prospects for some semiconductor companies. CEO Hock Tan and company reported decelerating revenue growth in the fiscal third quarter of 2023 (the three months ended in July) compared to earlier this year. 

However, Broadcom is in fact outperforming most of its peers right now, and its pending merger with cloud computing infrastructure company VMware (NYSE: VMW) could set the stage for another run higher. Is Broadcom stock a buy right now? 

Excluding Nvidia's massive GPU boom and companies that supply the automotive (and specifically electric vehicle) space, most of the semiconductor industry is in a deep slump. It started late last year with an oversupply of chips for PCs and smartphones, and since then has expanded to cloud computing chips -- especially non-AI cloud (again, an effect exacerbated by Nvidia). 

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Source Fool.com