Broadcom sells VMware end-user computing unit to KKR for $4 billion

Just hours after speculations, chipmaker Broadcom late on Monday signed a definitive agreement to sell its end-user computing unit to investment firm KKR for $4 billion.

When the transaction is final, the end-user computing (EUC) division will become a standalone company run by its existing management team and led by Shankar Iyer, the investment firm said in a statement.

The newly acquired division will have greater access to growth capital, KKR said. In addition, the investment firm said that plans are afoot to expand EUC’s research and development division and go-to-market functions, including sales, customer success and partner support teams.

Broadcom acquired the end-user computing business when it finalized its $61 billion purchase of VMware in late November. The EUC division includes the desktop virtualization platform Horizon and unified endpoint management platform Workspace ONE.

The chipmaker’s chief executive officer Hock Tran said back in December that Broadcom was looking to divest non-core divisions of VMware, including the EUC and Carbon Black.

When asked specifically about the reasons behind divesting the end-user computing and Carbon Black divisions, Tan had said that although both were good assets, the company didn’t want to be “distracted” by non-core parts of its business and wanted to focus on those divisions where it saw “the biggest value for its business model.”