Lisa Su, chair and chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), speaks during the company’s Gamers Day event in Seoul, South Korea, on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026.
SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Advanced Micro Devices reported third-quarter earnings on Tuesday that beat Wall Street’s expectations, with revenue jumping 45% and data center sales nearly doubling from a year earlier. The stock was up 8% in extended trading, but later pared those gains as election results came in.
Here’s how the chipmaker did versus LSEG consensus estimates for the quarter:
- Earnings per share: $2.09 adjusted vs. $1.95 expected
- Revenue: $13.38 billion vs. $13.09 billion expected
Revenue increased from $9.25 billion a year earlier, AMD said in a statement. Neoclouds like CoreWeave and Nebius rallied earlier Tuesday and remained higher after AMD reported results.
CEO Lisa Su said on the earnings call that she expects server revenue to double year over year in 2027 and data center AI growth to accelerate even faster than the company had projected 90 days ago. The company expects data center to drive the majority of its revenue and earnings growth.
“We have worked across our supply chain to secure the wafers, substrates, advanced packaging, memory, and other key components needed to support much higher growth next year,” Su said on the earnings call.
AMD’s report comes days after Intel disclosed similar data center growth, with revenue in that segment up 78% in the third quarter. But Intel’s stock plummeted 29% on Friday over concerns about weak guidance and Intel’s ability to meet demand.
The data center unit makes up the majority of AMD’s business, accounting for 64% of overall revenue, up from 47% a year ago.
After years spent chasing Nvidia in the market for artificial intelligence graphics processing units, or GPUs, AMD’s central processing units, or CPUs, are experiencing a major resurgence with the rise of agentic AI apps like Meta‘s Muse. AMD’s server CPUs are key for agentic apps because they power virtual machines and can run for hours on their own. Demand from agentic AI boosted AMD shares to a record in October.
“Adoption is just starting, and we expect demand to grow sharply as agents are deployed more broadly and take on more complex work,” Su said on the earnings call with analysts.
AMD stock chart.
PC market struggles
AMD’s stock is up about 125% this year, but it saw three consecutive days of losses before rallying on Tuesday amid an industrywide sell-off tied to fears about overspending on AI.
AMD is also a major player in the weakening PC market, which Intel blamed for its poor outlook last week. AMD and Intel are the largest makers of traditional x86 processors that power many laptops and desktops, while other laptops rely on Arm-based processors from the likes of Qualcomm and Apple.
Global PC shipments declined 4% in the second quarter from a year earlier due to soaring costs for memory and other components, according to Counterpoint Research.
AMD reports PC chip sales in a segment combined with gaming chips. Revenue in that business fell 8% from a year earlier to $3.7 billion. Gaming revenue was down 40% from a year ago.
For the fourth quarter, AMD said it expects about $17 billion in revenue, beating the $16.2 billion average analyst estimate, according to LSEG. AMD sees its gross margin for the quarter coming in at 55%, slightly below the average estimate of 55.3%, according to StreetAccount.
AMD also sells data center GPUs and full rack-scale systems called Helios that compete directly with Nvidia’s Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin systems. Meta, Microsoft, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Oracle are all beginning to use AMD Helios in their data centers. Meta said last week that its Helios racks are up and running, and AMD agreed to invest $1 billion in Meta’s equity offering.
AMD has also committed to investing up to $5 billion in Anthropic, which unveiled its highly anticipated prospectus last week as it inches closer to a potentially historic initial public offering.
During a visit to Taiwan in October, Su said she plans to “substantially increase our supply in 2027.” Su and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang have both made multiple trips to Taiwan and South Korea this year, holding meetings with key suppliers like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and memory leaders SK Hynix and Samsung.
In September, AMD said it would acquire World Labs for $8.2 billion in an all-stock deal. The San Francisco-based AI lab, founded by industry pioneer Fei-Fei Li, is developing a so-called world model that simulates 3D environments to aid in developing robots and other physically grounded AI applications.
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