AMD is a Functional Institution in Semiconductor Design
The U.S. chip designer is the main competitor of both Nvidia and Intel. It has demonstrated an ability to design superior chips and is pursuing further innovations in anticipation of more AI demand.
Advanced Micro Devices, more commonly known as AMD, is the third-most valuable U.S. semiconductor company after Nvidia and Broadcom, with a market capitalization of over $220 billion as of September 2024 (AMD).1 AMD is a “fabless” semiconductor company, meaning it designs its own computer chips but does not manufacture them, instead outsourcing production to contract manufacturers or “foundries” such as TSMC or Samsung. This makes AMD the second-most valuable fabless chip designer in the world, after Nvidia.2 It is also one of the fastest-growing companies in its industry. From 2015 to 2023, AMD’s annual revenue grew from just $4 billion to nearly $23 billion, and its market cap grew more than 125 times over.3 Since 2014, the CEO of the company has been currently 55-year-old Lisa Su, who is a cousin of Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang. AMD is the only major competitor to Intel when it comes to designing central processing units (CPUs) compatible with the x86 instruction set architecture (ISA), and it is also the only major competitor to Nvidia in discrete graphics processing units (GPUs).