When Lisa Su took the helm of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in October 2014, the company teetered on collapse—saddled with debt, outgunned by Intel, and valued at a mere $2 billion. Fast forward to March 20, 2025: AMD’s market cap stands at $172 billion, an 85-fold leap, surpassing Intel ($96 billion) since 2022. Under Su’s engineering-driven leadership, AMD powers Xbox, PlayStation, and critical U.S. defense tech. Yet, as the No. 2 player in AI chips behind Nvidia’s $3 trillion juggernaut, Su’s next gamble—annual AI chip launches and open-source software—could define AMD’s future. Here’s how she rewrote AMD’s story and what’s at stake in 2025.
A Dire Start and a Bold Bet
In 2014, AMD was a shadow of its former self. Intel dominated CPUs with a $180 billion valuation, while AMD’s aging designs and $2.2 billion debt spelled trouble. “I had mentors saying, ‘I don’t think that’s a good move,’” Su, now 55, recalled in a March 2025 Stanford speech. Undeterred, she took the CEO role, facing a stock price below $3 and a company some thought wouldn’t survive.
Su’s first moves were brutal but strategic: a 7% staff cut and a pivot to console chips for Sony and Microsoft, stabilizing cash flow. Yet, she insists survival hinged on innovation, not austerity. “There’s no such thing as cutting yourself to be a winner,” she told Stanford. Her big bet? A “blank sheet” redesign of AMD’s core tech—the Zen processor—launched in 2017 after years of R&D.
Chiplets: The Game-Changer
Su’s engineering roots—she holds a Ph.D. from MIT and authored a seminal 1992 paper on silicon-on-insulator tech—shone in AMD’s adoption of “chiplets.” Unlike Intel’s monolithic chips, AMD’s Zen architecture used smaller, modular pieces assembled into high-performance CPUs. By 2019, partnering with TSMC, chiplets cut costs, boosted flexibility, and sidestepped manufacturing risks—a lifeline for AMD’s tight finances.
The result? AMD overtook Intel in CPU performance by 2020, powering a 14% revenue jump to $26 billion in 2024—five times its 2014 haul. “Lisa knows how chips are made,” said University of Florida’s Scott Thompson, crediting her risk assessment. Chiplets later fueled AMD’s first big AI GPU, the Instinct MI300X (2023), repurposing supercomputing tech for the ChatGPT-driven boom.
Su’s Leadership: Grit Meets Vision
Born in Taiwan in 1969, Su immigrated to the U.S. as a child, excelling at Bronx Science and MIT before stints at Texas Instruments, IBM (under CEO Lou Gerstner), and Freescale Semiconductor, where she was CTO—a rarity, with women still just 8% of tech CTOs. At AMD, her hands-on style—frequent lab visits, per CTO Mark Papermaster—earned engineers’ trust. “She knows what they do, and they know she knows it,” he said.
As Silicon Valley’s only female CEO among the top 10 chip firms (30% female workforce, per Accenture), Su’s also its highest-paid woman CEO for five years, per AP surveys. Her poker-playing flair—she’s a Texas Hold’em fan—mirrors her calculated bets, like forgoing server chip sales until Zen could compete.
The AI Challenge: Taking on Nvidia
Despite AMD’s $172 billion valuation—fourth among U.S. chipmakers behind Nvidia, Broadcom, and Qualcomm—its AI GPU share trails Nvidia’s $115 billion 2024 data center haul. AMD’s $5 billion AI chip sales (up from $100 million in 2023) are promising, but Nvidia’s CUDA software locks in developers. Su’s counter? ROCm, an open-source rival, is backed by a new AI software division and annual chip releases like the MI325X (Q1 2025).
Posts on X show mixed sentiment: @Tomshardware lauds MI300X’s edge in some benchmarks, but @TechBitByte flags ROCm’s “steep learning curve” versus CUDA. Su’s outreach—meeting a software critic in December 2024—aims to shift AMD’s hardware-only rep. With AI chip demand projected at $500 billion by 2028, she sees room for both players.
What’s Next for AMD in 2025?
AMD’s stock, down 10% year-to-date after an 18% 2024 dip, reflects tariff jitters and Nvidia’s shadow. Yet, Su’s $6.5 billion 2024 R&D spend—six times 2014’s—keeps the pipeline humming. Success in AI hinges on ROCm adoption and MI-series wins at hyperscalers like Microsoft (a 2024 client). Failure risks ceding more ground to Nvidia’s 80%+ GPU share, per UBS.
From $2 billion to $172 billion, Su’s decade-long turnaround is a tech legend. Can she repeat the feat in AI? Q1 earnings (April 29) and ROCm’s developer traction will offer clues. For now, her mantra—“make the right bets”—guides AMD’s underdog fight.
