AMD

AMD was founded by Jerry Sanders and seven other co-founders, with its headquarters initially in Sunnyvale, California. The company later moved to a new headquarters in Santa Clara.⁠[1][2]

On September 27, 1972, AMD made its initial public offering of 620,000 shares of common stock, of which 500,000 were issued by the company and 120,000 came from selling stockholders, at an offering price of $15.50 per share. On October 15, 1979, the company’s stock was listed on the New York Stock ExchangeNew York Stock ExchangeThe New York Stock Exchange is a securities exchange on Wall Street in New York City. It traces its origins to the Buttonwood Agreement signed by 24 stockbrokers in 1792, has used its present name since 1863 and has been owned by Intercontinental Exchange since 2013.Open the full entry.⁠[1]

AMD and Intel signed a comprehensive patent cross-license agreement in 1976. In 1982 the two companies renewed their cooperation, and AMD became a second source for the 8086 and 8088 microprocessors used by IBMIBMIBM (International Business Machines Corporation) is an American information technology company, renamed in 1924 from the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R).Open the full entry. The second-source business brought AMD into the market for x86 personal computer processors, and the two companies later engaged in a long-running dispute over supply and intellectual property.⁠[3]

The executive-officer biography in NVIDIANVIDIANVIDIA is an American semiconductor and computing technology company that provides graphics processing units, artificial intelligence infrastructure, networking interconnects, and computing software, and is listed on Nasdaq under the ticker NVDA.Open the full entry’s Form 10-K for fiscal 2026 states that NVIDIA co-founder Jensen HuangJensen HuangJensen Huang is a co-founder of NVIDIA who served as its president, chief executive officer, and a director from the company’s founding in 1993 until he resigned from those positions in November 2026. He has a background in electrical engineering education and the semiconductor industry, and under his leadership NVIDIA’s business expanded from graphics chips to GPU general-purpose computing, artificial intelligence, and data center computing platforms.Open the full entry was a microprocessor designer at AMD from 1983 to 1985; NVIDIA’s board biography page gives the years as 1984 to 1985.⁠[4][5]

AMD launched the Am386 family in 1991. The company’s 1993 annual report said the family became an important source of revenue after its launch, with sales peaking in 1992, before facing price and volume pressure as the product matured and the market shifted to the 486. In the second quarter of 1993, AMD began shipping the Am486DX.⁠[6]

On January 17, 1996, AMD completed its merger with NexGen in a stock swap, exchanging 0.8 AMD share for each NexGen share. That year AMD launched the K5 microprocessor; its financial report for the year acknowledged that the K5 reached the market late and missed part of the opportunity in the fifth-generation processor market. In 1997 the company launched the K6, continuing to compete in the market for Pentium-compatible processors.⁠[7][3]

AMD launched the Athlon family in 1999, using a new x86 microarchitecture. In 2000 the company launched an Athlon processor running at 1 GHz, an important milestone in its competition with IntelIntelIntel is a semiconductor company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, founded by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore in 1968; it introduced the 4004 microprocessor in 1971, its x86 processors have long powered personal computers, it has pursued a foundry strategy since 2021, and Lip-Bu Tan has been its chief executive officer since 2025.Open the full entry on desktop processor performance.⁠[3]

In April, AMD launched Opteron for servers and workstations, and in September it launched Athlon 64 for personal computers. AMD64 extended the x86 instruction set to 64 bits while supporting both 32-bit and 64-bit applications, making it easier for users to migrate while keeping their older software. The processors also used an integrated memory controller and the HyperTransport interconnect.⁠[8]

On June 30, 2003, AMD and Fujitsu formed FASL LLC to combine their flash memory businesses, with AMD holding 60% and Fujitsu 40%; the company was renamed Spansion LLC on June 28, 2004. On December 21, 2005, Spansion completed its initial public offering, diluting AMD’s stake to 37.9%; AMD no longer controlled it or consolidated its financial statements, but still held equity in it at the time.⁠[9]

In April, AMD launched the dual-core Opteron, and in May it launched the Athlon 64 X2 for desktop computers. The dual-core products placed two processing cores on the same chip, aimed at multithreaded server workloads and multitasking on personal computers.⁠[9]

AMD completed its acquisition of ATI Technologies on October 24 and announced the completion the following day. The transaction consisted of about $4.3 billion in cash and 58 million shares of AMD common stock, for a total value of about $5.4 billion as stated in the announcement. The acquisition combined ATI’s graphics, chipset and consumer electronics technology with AMD’s processor business, and the company also set out the Fusion direction of integrating CPUs and GPUs.⁠[10][11]

On March 2, AMD contributed its two wafer fabrication facilities in Dresden, Germany, together with related assets and intellectual property, to GLOBALFOUNDRIES. Advanced Technology Investment Company invested, and the new company took over the manufacturing business; AMD continued to hold an equity stake in GLOBALFOUNDRIES after the spin-off.⁠[12]

On November 12, AMD and Intel announced that they had settled all outstanding antitrust and intellectual property disputes between them. The two companies entered into a new five-year patent cross-license; Intel agreed to pay AMD $1.25 billion and to abide by certain business practice provisions, and AMD agreed to withdraw its related lawsuits in the United States and Japan and the complaints it had filed with regulators.⁠[13]

An amendment to the wafer supply agreement announced on March 4 provided that AMD would transfer its remaining GLOBALFOUNDRIES equity to GLOBALFOUNDRIES, after which AMD would no longer hold a stake. The two companies kept their long-term supply relationship; the amendment also adjusted 2012 wafer pricing and relaxed the exclusive manufacturing arrangement for certain 28-nanometer APU products.⁠[14]

AMD’s board of directors appointed Lisa SuLisa SuLisa Su is a semiconductor engineer and business executive who serves as Chair and CEO of AMD. She earned bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked at Texas Instruments, IBM, and Freescale. After joining AMD in 2012, she became CEO in 2014, led the company’s growth in high-performance computing, data centers, and artificial intelligence, and also became Chair in 2022.Open the full entry as president, chief executive officer and a director, effective immediately, succeeding Rory Read. Su joined AMD in 2012 and was chief operating officer before taking the role; Read stayed on as an adviser to assist the transition through the end of 2014.⁠[15]

AMD’s stock moved from the New York Stock Exchange to trading on Nasdaq, keeping the ticker symbol AMD.⁠[1]

On March 2, AMD began selling its first three Ryzen 7 desktop processors worldwide, all eight-core models using the new Zen core microarchitecture and the AM4 platform. The Ryzen product line covers gaming, content creation and high-performance personal computers.⁠[16]

On June 20, AMD launched the EPYC 7000 series of data center processors, with up to 32 Zen cores. The launch showcased support from server makers, operating system vendors and cloud service partners; the design included eight memory channels and 128 PCIe 3.0 lanes per processor.⁠[17]

On February 14, AMD completed its all-stock acquisition of Xilinx, announced on October 27, 2020, expanding into FPGAs, adaptive systems-on-chip and related software. Each Xilinx share was exchanged for 1.7234 AMD shares, with fractional shares settled in cash. AMD’s securities filing in June 2022 later listed total purchase consideration of about $48.8 billion; this should be distinguished from news valuations calculated at share prices on different dates.⁠[18][19]

On May 26, AMD completed its acquisition of Pensando Systems in a transaction valued at about $1.9 billion. Pensando’s data processing units (DPUs) and software platform expanded AMD’s product range for cloud, enterprise and edge data center infrastructure services.⁠[20]

On August 9, AMD completed its cash acquisition of Silo AI, a Finnish artificial intelligence lab, for $665 million. After closing adjustments, transaction costs and deferred cash compensation, its financial reports recorded purchase consideration of $553 million. The team strengthens AMD’s ability to develop and deploy AI models and software on AMD hardware.⁠[21]

Beginning in the first quarter of fiscal 2025, AMD combined Client and Gaming into a single reportable segment, leaving three reportable segments: Data Center, Client and Gaming, and Embedded. Their products include data center chips such as EPYC and Instinct; Ryzen, Radeon and semi-custom chips for game consoles; and embedded products such as FPGAs and adaptive systems-on-chip.⁠[22]

On March 31, AMD completed its acquisition of ZT Systems to strengthen its ability to design, integrate and deploy AI servers and rack systems. Its 2025 annual report listed purchase consideration of $4.409 billion, including $3.188 billion in cash, $860 million in fair value of shares and $361 million in initial fair value of contingent consideration; this differs from the transaction value of about $4.9 billion at signing in 2024.⁠[23][22][21]

On October 6, AMD and OpenAIOpenAIOpenAI is an artificial intelligence research and product organization founded in 2015 that develops the GPT model series, ChatGPT, Codex and a developer API, and conducts research on image, speech, video and intelligent agents. After its 2025 restructuring, the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation continues to control the for-profit OpenAI Group PBC. Its growth has involved large-scale fundraising and compute partnerships, and has also been accompanied by controversies over governance, copyright, privacy and AI safety.Open the full entry announced a multi-year, multi-generation partnership to deploy 6 gigawatts of GPUs, initially planning to begin the first 1-gigawatt deployment of MI450 series GPUs in the second half of 2026. AMD issued OpenAI a warrant for up to 160 million shares of common stock, vesting in tranches tied to purchase volumes, the share price and technical and commercial conditions; this does not mean that OpenAI has acquired all the shares or that AMD has realized the corresponding revenue.⁠[24]

On October 27, AMD sold ZT’s data center infrastructure manufacturing business to Sanmina, retaining certain design-related intellectual property and employees. The annual report listed the transaction as $2.4 billion in cash and 1,151,052 shares of Sanmina stock, with the cash still subject to purchase price adjustments, plus up to $450 million in contingent cash consideration. The retained design business should be distinguished from the manufacturing business that was sold.⁠[22]

AMD reported fiscal 2025 revenue of $34.639 billion, up 34% year over year; under U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), operating income was $3.694 billion, net income was $4.335 billion and diluted earnings per share were $2.65. The company also disclosed that export controls on the MI308 resulted in net inventory and related charges of about $440 million for the year. Non-GAAP adjusted earnings are a different measure.⁠[25]

On February 24, AMD and Meta announced a multi-year partnership to deploy up to 6 gigawatts of AMD Instinct GPUs. Shipments for the first gigawatt were then expected to begin in the second half of 2026, using custom MI450-architecture GPUs, Venice EPYC processors, ROCm software and the Helios rack architecture. AMD also issued MetaMetaMeta (Meta Platforms, Inc.) is a publicly listed American technology company, renamed from Facebook in 2021, that operates social communication, digital advertising, virtual reality, smart glasses and artificial intelligence businesses.Open the full entry a performance-based warrant for up to 160 million shares, with vesting and exercise tied to purchases, the share price and technical and commercial conditions.⁠[26]

On July 22, AMD and Anthropic announced a partnership to deploy up to 2 gigawatts of MI450 series GPUs, with the first gigawatt planned to begin in the first half of 2027. The two companies will use Claude to optimize GPU workloads and advance ROCm development; AMD plans to adopt Claude in its engineering and product teams and committed to a future strategic equity investment of up to $5 billion in AnthropicAnthropicAnthropic is an artificial intelligence research and product company founded in 2021 that develops the Claude models, assistant, and tools such as Claude Code, and operates as a public benefit corporation. Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei are its co-founders, and its research covers model safety, interpretability, and steerability.Open the full entry. That amount is the cap on a future investment commitment.⁠[27]

On July 23, at Advancing AI 2026, AMD launched products including Helios, the MI400 series GPUs and sixth-generation EPYC. Helios is configured with 72 MI455X GPUs and 18 Venice EPYC processors, combined with Pensando networking and ROCm software. The announcement that day said OpenAI expected to bring Helios online starting in the fourth quarter of 2026 and to accelerate deployment in 2027, and that Meta was testing and validating the platform and workloads. These specific steps should not be described as full delivery of the 6-gigawatt partnerships.⁠[28]

Second-quarter 2026 results announced on August 4 showed revenue of $11.536 billion, up 50% year over year; GAAP operating income was $1.990 billion, net income was $2.297 billion and diluted earnings per share were $1.38. Data Center segment revenue was about $6.7 billion, up 107% year over year and about 58% of the company’s revenue for the quarter.⁠[29]

On August 6, AMD announced that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Taalas. Founded in 2023 and headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Taalas develops chips dedicated to AI inference. AMD plans to integrate its technology into its accelerator roadmap and Instinct systems; the announcement made clear that the deal remained subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals, and it did not disclose the transaction value or a completion date.⁠[30]

AMD said initial Helios racks were installed and undergoing testing at Meta, EPYC processors supported Muse, and Instinct GPUs served training and recommendation workloads. AMD also announced a $1 billion investment in Meta’s equity offering; broader deployment remained planned.⁠[31]

On November 3, AMD reported third-quarter 2026 revenue of $13.377 billion for the period ended September 26, up 45% year over year and 16% sequentially. GAAP operating income was $2.832 billion, net income $2.428 billion and diluted earnings per share $1.46. Adjusted non-GAAP net income was $3.471 billion and diluted earnings per share $2.09.⁠[32]

Data Center revenue was approximately $8.5 billion, up 97%; Client and Gaming revenue was $3.7 billion, down 8%; and Embedded revenue was $1.1 billion, up 29%. AMD forecast fourth-quarter revenue of approximately $17 billion, plus or minus 3%, and a non-GAAP gross margin of approximately 55%. These figures were forward-looking guidance.⁠[32]

AMD is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. The company uses third-party foundries to manufacture its chips, with suppliers including TSMCTSMCTSMC is a semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan, that pioneered the pure-play foundry model and manufactures chips for hundreds of customers worldwide.Open the full entry, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, UMC and Samsung, each handling different products and process technologies. AMD’s official website is https://www.amd.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[22][1]