Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) sent its stock soaring after flying past Wall Street estimates for the first quarter of the year, thanks to swelling AI infrastructure demand. AMD shares rose 15 per cent after hours on Tuesday, after the Santa Clara-headquartered chipmaker reported $10.3bn revenue, up 38 per cent on the same period last year. That number also landed comfortably ahead of the $9.9bn analysts had pencilled in.
Data Center Drives Growth
Its data centre arm was an outlier this quarter, hauling in $5.8bn in 2026 so far, a 57 per cent jump from twelve months prior. The company cited demand for the firm’s EPYC server processors for that rise, as well as a continued ramp-up of its GPU shipments. AMD’s guidance, however, is what moved the dial for investors. The company is forecasting second quarter revenue of around $11.2bn, sailing past estimates of $10.5bn – and implying 46 per cent year on year growth.
The tech behemoth’s chief executive, Lisa Su, dubbed the quarter as “outstanding”, saying she sees server growth accelerating meaningfully as it scales supply to meet demand. Management told investors it expects the server CPU market to boom at more than 35 per cent annually, potentially passing $120bn in the next four years.
AMD Closes in on Nvidia Dominance
Nvidia’s biggest rival has been accumulating the kind of hyperscaler relationships that were until recently largely Jensen Huang’s territory. A deal with Meta worth almost $60bn to supply its AI chips over the next five years, as well as agreements with other tech titans like Microsoft or AWS, have also given the firm a sneak peek into future demand that analysts see as new domain for AMD.
Senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, Matt Britzman, said the results showed investors “something more solid than AI hype to latch onto”. He noted that the AMD narrative is increasingly about compute opportunity and demand – with CPUs and GPUs both playing a role.
However, AMD still largely relies on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM) for its chips, making the supply access an ongoing constraint. Meanwhile, rival Intel has also improved its manufacturing performance recently. Questions also remain over whether AI infrastructure spending can sustain its current pace.
AMD’s year on year gain stands at 65 per cent, carried by a broader semiconductor rally driven by huge AI capex commitments from Big Tech.
