Who Is Lisa Su? AMD CEO Taking On Rival Nvidia To Increase Market Share In AI Chips
AMD CEO Lisa Su previously predicted $500 billion in market revenue for the chip maker by 2028.
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lisa Su has captured global attention after announcing that her company's latest MI350 AI chips can compete with Nvidia. While AMD still trails Nvidia in AI accelerator sales, the company hopes these advancements will help close the gap with the leading chipmaker.
Speaking at an event in San Jose last week, she said her company’s new chips are significantly faster. The MI355, which began shipping this month, is 35 times quicker than previous models. Su previously predicted $500 billion in market revenue by 2028, but she now sees it topping that number.
"People used to think that $500 billion was a very large number," she said in a briefing following her presentation. "Now it seems well within grasp," she added, according to a Bloomberg report.
Her comments have reverberated across the tech industry, sparking renewed interest in AMD CEO Su, who has many feathers in her cap, including being named TIME Magazine’s CEO of the Year for 2024.
Since becoming CEO, Su has been widely acknowledged for transforming AMD from near collapse to success. She took charge of AMD a decade ago when its stock was priced at $3 per share. Following her latest comments, the stock jumped past $127 on Tuesday.
Under her leadership, AMD’s overall market value surpassed its long-time rival Intel’s for the first time in 2022.
When Su became the CEO of the company in 2014, many wondered how long AMD would survive as it was on the brink of a potential bankruptcy. Today, Harvard Business School studies her leadership as one of the great modern business turnarounds, according to the TIME magazine.
Lisa Su’s Career And Education
An engineer by academic qualification, Su earned her PhD in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1994. She also holds a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from MIT. Born in Taiwan’s Tainan City, 55-year-old Lisa Su held key roles at companies like IBM before joining AMD.
According to her LinkedIn profile, after earning her PhD, Su worked as a Member of Technical Staff at Texas Instruments from June 1994 to February 1995. She then served as Vice President of Semiconductor R&D at IBM from February 1995 to May 2007.
Su spent over four years at Freescale Semiconductor before joining AMD. She became AMD’s President and CEO in October 2014 and was elevated as the Chair and CEO in February 2022.
