Lisa Su

Lisa Su was born in Taiwan, grew up in Queens, New York, and entered MIT in 1986. She received her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering in 1990, 1991, and 1994, respectively.⁠[1][2]

As an undergraduate researcher, she joined Hank Smith’s lab to make X-ray lithography masks, and later studied under her doctoral adviser Dimitri Antoniadis. In her commencement address, she recalled that repeatedly fabricating and testing devices sparked her interest in semiconductors.⁠[2]

From 1994 to 1995, she was a member of technical staff at Texas Instruments’ Semiconductor Process and Device Center. She then held engineering and business management roles at IBM, including Vice President of the Semiconductor Research and Development Center, responsible for silicon technology roadmaps, joint development partnerships, and R&D operations.⁠[3]

In 2007, she joined Freescale Semiconductor as Chief Technology Officer and later became Senior Vice President and General Manager of its Networking and Multimedia Group, responsible for its embedded communications and applications processor businesses.⁠[4]

In January 2012, Lisa Su joined AMD as Senior Vice President and General Manager of Global Business Units; she later became Chief Operating Officer, coordinating teams including product strategy, sales, and operations.⁠[3]

On October 8, 2014, AMD’s board appointed her President, Chief Executive Officer, and a director, succeeding Rory Read, effective immediately.⁠[4]

She later recalled that when she took over, the company had been through several difficult years, and some mentors considered the move very risky. The team then set high-performance computing as its long-term direction and pursued the turnaround through engineering R&D and teamwork.⁠[2]

On March 2, 2017, AMD launched its first Ryzen 7 desktop processors based on the Zen architecture. In the launch announcement, Su positioned the product as a major achievement in the company’s return to competition in high-performance personal computing.⁠[5]

On June 20 of the same year, AMD launched its EPYC 7000 series data center processors, working with server makers, cloud providers, and others. This product line extended the company’s high-performance processor business further into enterprise and cloud computing markets.⁠[6]

On February 14, 2022, AMD completed its acquisition of Xilinx, adding FPGAs, adaptive chips, and related software to its portfolio. On the same day, the company announced that Su would also serve as Chair.⁠[7][8]

She has also stayed connected with her alma mater, establishing the Lisa Su Fellowship Fund in 2018. In 2022, MIT’s Building 12, which houses MIT.nano, was named after her.⁠[1]

In 2024, she was named TIMETIMETIME is an American newsmagazine and media brand founded by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, which published its first issue on March 3, 1923; it is headquartered in New York and known for its Person of the Year selection and the TIME100 list. Since 2018 it has been personally owned by Marc and Lynne Benioff; its current Chief Executive Officer is Jessica Sibley, and its Editor-in-Chief is Sam Jacobs.Open the full entry’s CEO of the Year. She has also received industry honors such as the IEEE Robert N. Noyce Medal and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.⁠[1]

In December 2024, she responded on X to outside feedback on AMD’s software ecosystem, saying there was still room to improve optimization for customers and workloads and pledging to keep building an open software stack. The response reflected software adaptation challenges beyond hardware capabilities.⁠[9]

On October 6, 2025, 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 GPU partnership, planning to deploy a total of 6 gigawatts of AMD compute. The figure is the deployment target under the two companies’ agreement and does not mean it had all been built at the time.⁠[10]

In November 2025, the Semiconductor Industry Association announced that it had elected Lisa Su as chair of its board.⁠[11]

On May 28, 2026, she returned to MIT to deliver the commencement address, encouraging graduates to take on hard problems and stressing that technology alone does not determine the future and that people must still take responsibility for judgments and outcomes.⁠[2]

On July 23, she took part in AMD’s Advancing AI event, presenting the direction of its open platform and industry partnerships. The company simultaneously launched the Helios rack system, MI400 series GPUs, and new-generation EPYC processors, and disclosed progress on collaborations with several AI companies.⁠[12]

On August 6, AMD announced an agreement to acquire AI inference chip company Taalas, which Su also announced on her own account. On September 1, she said on X that the first clusters built with HUMAIN and Cisco were operational in Saudi Arabia.⁠[13][14][15]

AMD: The semiconductor company where she serves as Chair and CEO. Official website: https://www.amd.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[3]

Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA): The industry association whose board she chairs. Official website: https://www.semiconductors.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[11]

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Where she earned her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. Official website: https://www.mit.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]

IBM: The company where she previously worked in semiconductor engineering and management. Official website: https://www.ibm.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[3]

X: Public account: https://x.com/LisaSu (opens in a new window). AMD’s website has a profile page for her: https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/leadership/lisa-su.html (opens in a new window).⁠[14][3]