About Charlie Kawwas
In 2025 and early 2026, Charlie Kawwas, President of Broadcom's Semiconductor Solutions Group, has been a prominent voice on the infrastructure demands of artificial intelligence. He has described AI infrastructure as "civilization's next-generation operating system" and a "critical utility" for the global population. In October 2025, Kawwas joined OpenAI executives Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, along with Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, to announce a partnership to design a custom AI chip and system, with Kawwas stating that Broadcom is "defining civilization's next-generation operating system." He has repeatedly identified energy consumption as the primary challenge to democratizing AI, noting that compute demand is increasing by 10x annually and that power access is the main hurdle for deploying large AI clusters. Kawwas has highlighted Broadcom's engineering focus, stating that over 13,000 of his 15,000 employees are engineers, and has showcased innovations such as the Tomahawk 5 networking chip and silicon photonics co-packaged optics, which he said reduces power consumption by 70%.
Kawwas has also shared his personal background and career philosophy in multiple public appearances. He has spoken about arriving in Montreal from Bethlehem with no high school diploma and little English, and credited Concordia University for giving him an opportunity)Skip. In June 2025, he received an honorary doctorate from Concordia, where he told graduates that his formula for success is "WEL": work hard, embrace challenges, and live adaptability. He has advised engineers to choose their own mentors, citing Hock Tan as his own, and urged young professionals to embrace AI or risk being left behind. Kawwas has also discussed his daily rituals of exercising, calling his mother on video, and praying before bed.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Charlie Kawwas's recent appearances.
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Transcript (17 segments)
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Interviewer0:00
And AI. So I want to move to the next section, which is about personal growth and professional development. So Charlie, you have been a role model for all the engineers.
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Charlie Kawwas0:10
Thank you.
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Interviewer0:10
So you got a PhD in networking, computer science, right? Computer engineering. And also you became an engineer, then a leader in engineering, then you became a sales executive, and during the COVID you became the COO of Broadcom, right? So that's an amazing journey as an engineer for myself. I think that's very inspiring. So what's the secret to switching from engineering to sales, to operating officer, and then executive leader? What's your secret? Can you share some story?
C
Charlie Kawwas0:46
One of the secrets I'd like to share with you, I haven't shared it with many before. You have to choose your own mentor.
I
Interviewer0:54
And how many of you have mentors today? Just raise your hand. Okay, so let's call it about 15%. You saw I raised my hand.
C
Charlie Kawwas1:04
I have a mentor and I'm very lucky, proud, and honored to say my mentor is Hock Tan.
C
Charlie Kawwas1:07
You should never ever have the ego to say, 'I have reached a certain level of engineering knowledge. I'm a fellow. I cannot learn from anybody,' or 'I have reached a certain level of executive positions that I'm going to tell people what to do and not learn from anybody else.' I think that's a big mistake. I think the only day you stop learning is the day you die. And we all have to keep learning.
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Interviewer1:36
Keep learning.
C
Charlie Kawwas1:36
And the best way to learn is through picking the right mentor for you at the right time. And I have to tell you, in my journey, I chose my mentors. I'll tell you about my journey with Hock. When I started working for him over 10 years ago, I said, 'You are going to help me and coach me throughout my career.' He says, 'I don't understand what mentor means and I'm not going to do that.' I said, 'No, you are going to do that. First thing is I'm going to get an office to sit next to you.' He says, 'Nobody sits next to me. They're all afraid of me.' I decided and I forced myself to sit next to him. I said, 'I want to be in as many meetings. I want to learn from you.' I did this previously with the prior mentor who was Abby Tal Walker, the CEO of LSI, a great mentor for me. Throughout my journey, I started realizing mentorship is important. When I asked him, he was very busy because he was actually a very popular professor of engineering, and I went to him and I said, 'I would like you to teach me these things,' and he says, 'But I don't have time.' So the advice I have for all of you is pick a mentor, and you don't have to spend every day with that mentor. So today I don't spend, I don't sit next to Hock. He's in Palo Alto, I'm in San Jose, for example. We don't sit together like we used to three, four, five years ago. He is still my mentor. And my advice to all of you, if you don't have a mentor, my advice: go get a mentor. It's extremely enlightening. Maybe one day ChatGPT will be your mentor. Today, pick a human being is my advice.
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Interviewer3:07
Yes, I think that's very good information. I think Kaspa has a mentorship program, by the way.
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Charlie Kawwas3:12
Yes. I saw that's wonderful. We have a lot of industry leaders come to give talks and also do one-on-one kind of personal meetings with our Kaspa members.
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Interviewer3:23
So I think Charlie, you are booked.
C
Charlie Kawwas3:24
All right, great. Thank you.
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Interviewer3:25
So mentorship is an important aspect for professional growth, right? But I wanted to be a little bit specific because AI and semiconductor technology is moving so fast. So for young engineers, how do young engineers thrive in this kind of super changing environment of AI and semiconductor? Everything is happening so fast.
C
Charlie Kawwas3:48
Yeah. I would say for the engineers, and in general actually even for us, and my advice to my son is now doing his PhD in engineering. And my advice to him as well is one key word which I call adaptability. Adaptability. The only constant that we have around us is change. And if you don't adapt to that change, you will not stay in this industry. This industry, especially semiconductors and AI, is moving so fast. If you don't change the company you're in, if you don't actually run as fast as possible and adapt to these changing environments that we have, you will not be successful. So for the young engineers, the change that's happening around you is probably the biggest opportunity right now for you. So I remember when I was just a graduating engineer and starting to work on this new protocol that's called Ethernet. It was a huge change. Some of you probably don't remember X25, which was a circuit switch platform that was now going to packet. I embraced it. I sat down. I said, 'I want to learn what Ethernet means.' I did my undergrad at 10 megabits per second, and as this changed to ATM, I did my masters on ATM. I changed, I switched from packets to cells, then MPLS came out and IP, and I flipped it to the service providers, i.e., hyperscalers down the road. And then the value from the hardware side is not in the systems world, it's actually in the semiconductor company. So I decided to join the semiconductor company. And so for the young engineers, look around you. You are now studying engineering at the pivotal point of AI. So you have to embrace AI. You have to say, 'How can I use AI and adapt to AI and maybe innovate in AI to take my career?' Whether it's in semiconductor engineering, whether it's in hardware systems engineering, software engineering, or even mechanical, civil engineering, other fields of engineering. And my view: embrace this change, adapt with it, and if you do this the fastest, you will be the most successful person in your domain.
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Interviewer5:58
Right, that's very insightful. Embrace AI, embrace AI, or you will be replaced by AI.
