Am I too bullish about AMD?

Well, I think, Jim, you're right on a couple of aspects.

What we have seen in the AI market over the last, I would say, six or seven months is really an inflection in demand, and especially in the CPU market.

So what we're finding is as AI is becoming more useful for people, as we're using more agents, as enterprises are using know more of their workloads from let's call it what was experimentation into now production workloads people need a lot more cpu compute as well as um you know gpu compute and we are the leaders in cpu compute we're very very you know proud of our technology stack we just announced our next generation venice has launched and you know as you know our italian cities very well Venice is leadership across every aspect of compute, whether you're talking about the highest performance or the most overall performance per core.

Those are areas where we just lead.

So we're excited about where the market is because the market needs a lot more compute.

And we're even more excited about just the overall positioning in the market because our product portfolio is so broad and strong.

How did you see it? How come they didn't see it?

Mm-hmm

... has always been about pushing the envelope, and, you know, in some sense, um, you know, being risk-takers, you know, wanting to have the best road maps out there.

Uh, that has always been the foundation of AMD.

Um, I think the last 10-plus years, you know, hopefully what, um, you know, I've brought to it, what Mark Papermaster, our CTO, has brought, what the leadership has brought is a sense of not only are we going to put the best technology out there, but we're gonna be predictable, we're gonna be great partners, uh, and we're going to do it in a way that, um, you know, brings together the ecosystem.

And, you know, I have to say, everything about tech, like, I was so happy to see, uh, to have, you know, Tom Brown of Anthropic with us.

Yeah.

So triplets, networking, optimization CPU and GPU, uh, putting that together in Helios, I mean, that's really unfolded over the last, you know, three or four years.

And today, you know, we're thinking about, you know, what's, you know, beyond, um, uh, the roadmap.

So with that as a backdrop, tell me about the significance of this moment for Helios and AMD.

Yeah, so first of all, uh, Jon, uh, all of those things are true, but what we see is actually, you know, something that's much, much broader.

I mean, this is, like, an incredible moment for AI.

You know, we look at our, you know, markets, spend time with our customers all the time and, you know, from what we see today, you know, the market for high performance in AI computing over the next, you know, four or five years is gonna reach $2 trillion of TAM in market opportunity.

So it's really huge and tremendous.

And I'm very happy to announce, uh, this morning we announced that our Helios, uh, rack scale system is in full production, um, as well as our new, you know, Venice processors are in full production.

And, uh, this is like a huge step up in terms of AI capability.

So if that works together, what does it ideally do, especially as people are thinking about AMD's position versus Nvidia CUDA?

What, you know, what excites you about the technology and, and, you know, how do you see AI, and maybe I'm talking about generative AI, evolving, you know, in the next, the next phase, let's say?

Yeah, absolutely.

So I think if we take a step back and look at, you know, sort of the, the whole idea of AI or artificial intelligence, I mean, it's actually been around for quite some time.

Um, but what's really happened, um, over the last, I don't know, let's call it 15, 16 months or so, you know, with the advent of, um, you know, ChatGPT, uh, coming out and generative AI, I think what we've all, um, understood is, you know, there's a superpower here.

I mean, AI is really, you know, the most important technology, um, that, you know, we've seen over the last, I don't know, let's call it 50 years.

Um, and uh, you know, when we look at the capability, it really has the capability to augment so many things.

So I mean, to your basic, um, you know, point of, you know, do we need to care, and you know, how important is it? Um, it is, um, you know, a really an opportunity, um, to really accelerate, um, all aspects of our business and frankly of humanity, um, as well.

If, if, if AI is gonna be a force for good, how does that happen? Will it happen-- Will technology save us from the downsides of technology or, or do we all, all of us need to be contributing to the discussion now to make sure we don't get these, these, you know, the sort of worst possible outcomes later?

[laughs]

...

in a small, a very, very, a small, uh, area.

But yes, it's been a very, uh, exciting week, uh, for us and, um, in, you know, we're in, um, this time right now where the semiconductor market and the AI market has never been growing faster.

Every month, we're surprised by how much growth there is, and every time we look at the usage of the technology, we're convinced that, you know, this is, uh, the most, um, the highest growth time for the market.

And as a result, for AMD, our strategy is to lead in high performance and AI computing.

And to do that, we must have a very strong supply chain, and we must have very strong partners.

Could you give us some expectation about that?

We're way off here in terms of what we think things are gonna – what, how much they're gonna need"?

Yeah, David, it's a great point.

Uh, we have been watching the development of the CPU market, um, continuing to increase.

Um, certainly last year, you know, we've talked about, you know, seeing the increase in the CPU market TAM.

I think it's really been over the last 90 days, David, where we've talked to every major hyperscaler, uh, and every customer is talking about not only what they need in '26, uh, because frankly, you know, '26 is, uh, very much, um, already in progress.

But we're now talking about long term what do they need in 2027, what do they need in 2028.

Uh, we're talking about just how much CPU do you need, uh, compared to the accelerator.

How much of your H2 Helios production is spoken of, for example, by Meta or OpenAI alone versus the rest of your pipeline, Lisa?

If, if, if AI is gonna be a force for good, how does that happen? Will it happen, will technology save us from the downsides of technology, or, or do we all, all of us need to be contributing to the discussion now to make sure we don't get these, these, you know, the sort of worst possible outcomes later?

Well, um, as you said, I'm probably a, a techno-optimist, but I, I, I'm actually a very, very pragmatic way of thinking about this is, um, the technology is not perfect, okay? As good as technology is, uh, we're still in the very early stages of the deployment of AI.

Um, and we do know that, you know, the AIs are not always right.

And, and so part of what we have to do, um, as a set of leaders is figure out how to use the technology for good and also protect, um, you know, the downsides.

And, uh, look, I think this is a very vibrant conversation.

Um, I think all of us are learning in the process.

You know, I, I will say that, you know, um, I've personally learned a ton, um, over the last, uh, you know, uh, 12 plus months in terms of how to apply AI even within, um, our own company and, and, uh, also talking to many of my peers how, how things are going.

How do you, how do you think about, you know, from where you are at AMD, how do you think about this balance between, between speed and caution?

Why is Meta taking a share in you?

Well, here's the thing that's important about AI infrastructure, Jim.

We are at a time and a place where the industry is moving so fast, and it's about how do we accelerate the rate and pace of innovation? And that's exactly what our strategic relationship with Meta is all about.

You know, we've been working really well together.

Our teams are very much, uh, you know, working on sort of the future, but we wanted to take a big step function, uh, increase in that engagement, and, you know, that's the beauty of this agreement that we're talking about.

It is actually a win for AMD, it's a win for Meta, and it's a win for our shareholders in the sense that, uh, we're deploying at huge scale.

I mean, six gigawatts is an incredible amount of compute.

It was also 160 million, and some of your shareholders, a couple of them I spoke to this morning, say, "That's, that's 20% of the company conceivably under warrant here." Why are, are you including these? I mean, you explained it to a certain extent, but there are- the cynics would say, "Well, you have to, because otherwise they're not going to buy your chips." How do you respond to that?

Why is it significant?

Well, first of all, Ed, it's great to be here with you at CES.

I think CES is always a great way to kick off the year because you get so much perspective.

So it was fun giving the keynote last night.

Look, Helios is a massive system.

You can see it in the background here.

And MI455 is just an incredibly powerful chip.

I often ask you to quantify demand, but is there a way to quantify the severity in the lack of compute, the deficit that's out there right now?

When you look at that cluster, no pun intended, who do you see as the most formidable competitor to you?

You know, Lauren, we're, we're kind of in this notion of a competition, and I'm in this notion of, this is a huge market, and you're going to need all kinds of chips.

And I really believe that.

I think if I talk about, you know, my vision of where this industry goes, you are going to need CPUs.

You're gonna need GPUs.

You're going to need ASICs or custom chips.

Uh, you're going to need all kinds of things.

How does your experience with this administration thus far, this presidential administration, compare to your relations with the last?

Gi- given the current phase that we're in of the AI boom and the market conditions, do some of these big deals have to be done in this way that feels sort of circular to investors?

Uh, look, I, I don't think you have to do anything.

I think people make choices.

Uh, there are plenty of deals where, you know, we are basically selling GPUs.

I think the opportunity is, uh, to partner deeply in the ecosystem.

Uh, there are, you know, different opportunities to do that, and we've chosen a mechanism, uh, which I think really ties the companies together in a way that, you know, they care about my success, I care about their success.

And everyone wins in this, you know, fashion.

For AMD, the big money will be coming from inferencing, the space she's pivoted the company toward.

As a customer, does it make OpenAI the largest for that particular product?

Well, this is certainly the largest deployment that we have announced by far.

I mean, you know, six gigawatts of compute.

As Greg said, we're going to start with the first gigawatt in the second half of 2026 on our new next generation MI450 chip.

I think the thing to understand is these types of partnerships actually take years to really get comfortable with the idea that we're going to go all in together.

And this is an all in partnership in terms of building out the AI compute that OpenAI needs for everything that they're offering to the world.

So, yes, it's a huge deal.

But would you just sort of draw out the pathway to that first gigawatt? It seems like you're prepared to move quickly here.

And if you forecast that, how do we actually meet all of that? What needs to happen that's not happening today inside of the United States to actually do that?

Yeah.

It's, it's a great, great point.

I mean, that's, that's what we're seeing.

We're seeing this, uh, incredibly large demand, uh, for AI and they're coming from, you know, Sam and Elon are certainly, uh, the, you know, the, the leaders, a couple of the leaders.

Uh, there's, there's a lot of demand elsewhere too.

I mean, if you think about it, nations want their own AI.

Can you just tell us sort of like the lessons learned of why you thrived and maybe what you take away from their journey that you make sure AMD doesn't play out?

Mm-hmm.

Um, that's huge.

Uh, I think there was a big thing that people-... uh, learned from this thing because, uh, it used to be that there was a belief that you couldn't build, uh, the same, you know, performance, power, yield here in the United States, that frankly, uh, it was hard, we didn't have all the systems built and all of that.

What has been really good over the last, you know, sort of several years as we've started bringing some of the manufacturing back to the United States, like TSMC has now said on record that their yields and capability in Arizona are as good as, uh, you know, the chips that they build in Taiwan.

And we see it, like we see it in our own products.

Like, it's fantastic.

Mm-hmm.

And over the last few years, we have really pivoted the company so that AI is in every product.

Mm-hmm.

But what was true about it is it was sort of so hard to use because not everyone had access to AI.

And what that ChatGPT moment unlocked was that, wow-Now everybody can interact with AI.

Like, my dad can interact with AI because you're using, you know, spoken language, you're using text.

You're using a way of expressing, how do you get a computer to do things without having to have deep knowledge of, you know, programming languages and things like that.

Um, I think that moment just unlocked the fact that if we can make computers easier to use-

Mm-hmm.

Um, that's huge.