(Reuters) – Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc plans to use Broadcom (NASDAQ) Inc’s custom chip for building its metaverse hardware. Analysts at J.P. Morgan stated on Tuesday that Broadcom (NASDAQ) Inc would be the next billion dollar ASIC customer.

ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) chips will drive $2 billion to $2.5 billion in revenue for Broadcom this year, helped by its deals with Meta and partnerships with Alphabet (NASDAQ:) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:), the analysts said.

Analyst Harlan Sur stated that the wins were primarily at 3 and 5 nanometres and would be used to fuel Meta’s metaverse architecture, which it will use over the coming years.

Meta has made significant investments in the metaverse, a virtual place where people can interact, play and work. This is done by improving the hardware that allows access to the virtual realm.

Sur said that Meta would be Broadcom’s $1 billion-a year ASIC customer in the three- to four-year period following Google.

ASICs can perform highly-specialized tasks such as machine learning and AI.

Since 2016, Broadcom and Google co-developed Google’s machine learnings chip. The brokerage estimated that it would be worth more than $1.3 billion by 2022.

Meta, which is creating a variety of hardware products in the metaverse including smart glasses or virtual reality headsets has just opened its first physical shop where you can check out these and other gadgets.

Sur said, “Near-term ASIC Program Pipeline is Strong as We Believe Broadcom Will Be Increasing Meta/Facebook And Microsoft ASICs This Year.”

Broadcom’s semiconductor business (which makes custom chips) contributed over 70% of the nearly $27.5 million revenue for 2021.