This Chipmaker Firm's Top Boss Named CEO Of The Year — And No, It's Not Nvidia

Lisa Su, the CEO of Advanced Micro Devices Inc., has been named CEO of the Year by Time magazine, marking a significant milestone in her career and a testament to her leadership in the semiconductor industry. Su, who took the reins at AMD in 2014, has steered the company from near obscurity to a market leader, challenging the dominance of giants like Intel and, more recently, Nvidia Corp.

This recognition comes at a time when the semiconductor industry is experiencing massive growth, driven largely by advancements in artificial intelligence and graphics processing units, both of which are integral to AMD’s strategy. However, Su's journey to the top has been far from ordinary, as it is shaped by her technical expertise, vision, and a commitment to transformation.

Born in Taiwan and raised in New York, Su’s early life was marked by a deep interest in technology and engineering. Su pursued her passion at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she earned a bachelor’s degree, followed by a master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering. Her academic background in electrical engineering set the stage for a career that would bridge the gap between technical innovation and corporate leadership.

Su’s first major break came at Texas Instruments, where she worked in the company’s semiconductor division, followed by a stint at IBM.

When Su took over as AMD’s CEO in 2014, the company was facing significant challenges. It was considered a distant second to Intel in the highly competitive semiconductor space, with its stock price languishing at around $3 per share, as per a Bloomberg report. The company’s share in the data-center chip market had dwindled, and many analysts questioned how much longer AMD could survive.

Su, an engineer at heart, spearheaded a comprehensive overhaul of AMD’s strategy, products, and relationships with customers. Under her leadership, the company refocused on innovation, and AMD's products, particularly in the areas of Central Processing Units and GPUs, began to gain significant traction in both the consumer and enterprise markets, Time reported.

In recent years, AMD has closed the gap, and as of today, its market capitalisation is nearly $207 billion—more than double Intel's $86.95 billion.

In 2022, the company's total value surpassed that of its long-time rival, Intel, for the first time. Today, AMD stock is trading at approximately $140, reflecting a nearly 50-fold increase since Su became CEO, Time reported.

One of the key reasons behind this success is AMD's foray into the data-center chip market. While Intel long held a monopoly on high-performance chips for data centers, Su and her team bettered AMD’s offerings. This shift in focus has made AMD a formidable player in the data-center industry, with its chips powering major cloud services from the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.

Su's leadership has also paid off in the burgeoning market for AI. As AI technology has become a driving force in global technology, AMD’s chips have been critical to running AI programs, from large language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT to the training and deployment of AI systems across industries. AMD’s GPUs are pivotal in this regard, and with AI's continued rise, the company's position in the market is expected to strengthen.

While AMD has made tremendous strides under Su’s leadership, it faces new challenges in the form of emerging competition from Nvidia, led by Jensen Huang. Interestingly, Su and Huang are distant relatives.