AMD CEO Lisa Su went on damage control Wednesday after the chipmaker's stock tanked 13%, telling CNBC that AI demand is accelerating faster than she imagined and data center business has stepped up significantly from Q4 to Q1. The remarks come just a day after AMD posted solid earnings but disappointed investors with what many saw as conservative guidance, sending shares tumbling despite the company projecting $9.8 billion in Q1 revenue above Wall Street's $9.38 billion estimate.
AMD CEO Lisa Su spent Wednesday afternoon firefighting investor concerns after the company's stock got hammered despite beating earnings expectations. The chipmaker's shares plunged 13% following Tuesday's fourth-quarter results, with Wall Street fixating on what it saw as underwhelming guidance rather than the solid numbers AMD actually delivered.
"What I would tell you from someone on the inside is AI is accelerating at a pace that I would not have imagined," Su told CNBC's Squawk on the Street on Wednesday. She stressed that demand continues to outstrip compute supply, and that AMD has seen a meaningful step up in orders over the past two to three months.
The core issue? AMD guided for $9.8 billion in Q1 revenue, plus or minus $300 million. That's actually above the Street's $9.38 billion consensus, but analysts had been pricing in a far more explosive quarter given the AI spending frenzy sweeping the industry. Nvidia has been posting blowout numbers quarter after quarter, and AMD's relative conservatism left some wondering if the company is losing ground in the AI chip wars.
Su pushed back hard on that narrative. She said AMD's data center business has actually accelerated from the fourth to first quarter, and that demand for the company's central processing units is "going gangbusters" as businesses rapidly scale up compute infrastructure for AI enterprise workloads. That's a crucial distinction - while dominates GPU-based AI training, AMD is making inroads on the CPU side where enterprises need balanced systems.
