AMD (Advanced Micro Devices Inc.) (NASDAQ: AMD)

AMD has transformed from Intel's perpetual underdog into a legitimate competitor across CPUs, GPUs, and now AI accelerators. Revenue hit about $23 billion in 2023, with data center becoming the largest segment. The company's EPYC server processors have taken significant share from Intel, and its MI300 AI accelerators are the only real alternative to NVIDIA's GPUs. CEO Lisa Su has orchestrated one of the greatest corporate turnarounds in tech history.

AMD designs chips but outsources manufacturing to TSMC — a fabless model that avoids the massive capital expenditure of running fabs. Four segments: Data Center, Client (PC processors), Gaming, and Embedded. Data center is the growth engine and highest-margin business. The $49 billion Xilinx acquisition in 2022 added the Embedded segment and FPGA capabilities.

Jerry Sanders founded AMD in 1969 as a second-source manufacturer for Intel chips. The company nearly went bankrupt multiple times, most notably around 2014-2015 when the stock traded below $2. Lisa Su became CEO in 2014 and launched the Zen architecture in 2017, which changed everything. The Xilinx deal closed in 2022, and the AI accelerator push began in earnest in 2023.