When Lisa Su took over AMD at the end of 2014, the company was in the midst of a storm. In the face of strong competition from Intel, AMD's processor products are not competitive, and the company is heavily indebted, with a market value of only about $2 billion, while Intel's market value is as high as $180 billion. There was widespread disbelief that she would be able to lead AMD out of the predicament, but she still accepted the challenge with determination.
As an engineer who has been deeply involved in the semiconductor industry for many years, Lisa Su knows that technology is the key to AMD's turnaround. After taking office, she quickly made adjustments, first cutting 7% of employees, streamlining the organizational structure, and reaching cooperation with Sony and Microsoft to provide chips for game consoles and improve the company's cash flow. But she understands that these measures are only a short-term solution, and the real way out lies in product innovation.
She decisively suspended the sale of server chips and focused on developing products that could truly compete with Intel. She led the team to redesign the CPU architecture, culminating in the launch of the "Zen" core. In 2017, processors based on this architecture were officially launched and quickly won market acceptance. At the same time, AMD has pioneered the use of "chiplet" designs, which increase production flexibility and reduce manufacturing costs. The success of this technology has enabled AMD to gain a firm foothold in the high-performance computing market, and it has become one of the widely used standards in the industry.
Under Lisa Su's leadership, AMD's market capitalization managed to surpass Intel's in 2022. To date, the company's market capitalization has grown to $172 billion, an increase of about 85 times from the beginning of her tenure, and the stock price has risen from $3 to more than $106.
Figure: AMD's AI processor
Enter AI and challenge NVIDIA
Despite gaining a firm foothold in the CPU market, Lisa Su has not stopped, her next target is the artificial intelligence chip market, and the king here is NVIDIA. Today, Nvidia has a market capitalization of nearly $3 trillion and firmly controls the GPU market, the heart of AI computing. In contrast, AMD's AI chip business is still in its infancy, but Lisa Su has not flinched.
In 2024, AMD launched the Instinct MI300X AI acceleration chip, which jumps AI chip sales from $100 million in 2023 to $500 million. In order to further expand its market share, AMD has a clear AI strategy: launching a new generation of AI chips every year, while increasing investment in the software ecosystem. Lisa Su personally participated in the technical planning, frequently visited the laboratory, promoted the reform of the software team, and strived to find a breakthrough in the AI computing ecosystem.
AMD is already competitive in hardware, but it still faces challenges at the software level. NVIDIA's CUDA ecosystem is deeply rooted in the field of AI development, while AMD's ROCm is an open platform, but the market acceptance is low. To change that, AMD reorganized its software team, created a dedicated AI software division, and accelerated the optimization and rollout of ROCm. At the same time, Lisa Su personally communicated with developers, listened to their opinions, and showed her determination to improve the competitiveness of the software.
Lisa Su did not take surpassing Nvidia as her only goal, but saw the huge potential of the AI computing market. She predicts that by 2028, the AI chip market will grow to $500 billion, equivalent to the size of the entire semiconductor market in the past.
From rescuing AMD, which was on the verge of bankruptcy, to challenging industry giant NVIDIA, Lisa Su has been firm and pragmatic in every step. In the highly competitive semiconductor industry, AMD's story continues, and her leadership will determine how far the company can go in the future.
