It has been a huge week for Nvidia rival

AMD at its advancing AI conference in

San Francisco. The unveiling of new

chips, a new $5 billion investment in

anthropic, and a reiteration that demand

for AI remains incredibly strong. I sat

down for a conversation with AMD chair

and CEO Dr. Lisa Sue. Sue has been the

driving force behind AMD's ascent the

past decade. First of all, for the

industry, I mean, we're calling the

industry market growth to be, you know,

get to a $2 trillion market opportunity

for us um as we think about, you know,

from now through 2030. So, it's just an

incredibly large market. Um we're seeing

this point in AI you know we've called

the fact that uh AI is at an inflection

point where more and more people are

doing useful work doing meaningful work

and you know that has made um inference

uh sort of the largest growth driver

overall

and I am super excited to say that we

are in full production for Helios our

MI455 rack scale architecture our new

Venice uh CPUs and a tremendous amount

of new content. So yeah, it's it's a

pretty exciting time for us. I think

it's an exciting time for industry um

and more importantly for all of us in

the AI ecosystem. Like this is the time

to really um accelerate what we can

bring to the market.

>> Amongst all the important points you

made uh at the event, Lisa, uh this one

also stood out to me. AI is evolving.

You talked about just now too. AI is

evolving from training to what does that

mean for the AI revolution and what does

it mean for a company like AMD?

Well, what it really means, Brian, is

all of us are now starting to experience

the real power of AI. So, uh, we have

great customers that are training and

doing foundational models. Um, but the

key is, you know, the model is only as

good as the output that you get from it.

And so, with inference, that is all of

us asking questions. That's agents

working. And that is growing at a um

really really accelerated rate and pace.

And that's why we're saying that just

the accelerator market alone, it's going

to reach uh $1.4 trillion by the time we

get to 2030. And inference is really the

way we turn, you know, AI from a

technology to something uh that really

changes the way we do business, the way

we um do research, the way we do um

healthcare, all of those aspects of it.

So I'm really really excited to see the

rate and pace of adoption of AI. Uh,

Lisa, I think I've told you this before,

but it bears repeating. I live

vicariously through your X feed. I see

you traveling the country. I've seen you

at the White House before. Lots of cool

things you've been doing this year as

you've traveled the world and you've

done your important work at AMD. What

has surprised you about this AI

movement?

>> I I think what has um, you know,

surprised me uh, Brian, in a very

positive way is uh, the rate and pace of

adoption is actually faster than any of

us thought. I mean, you know, frankly,

we usually think about uh what's going

to happen in a market, we think about

updating it on an annual basis. And with

AI and with everything that we've seen

around the world with our customers,

what we're seeing is things are changing

on a monthly and a quarterly basis. So,

just over the last five or six months,

you know, agents have become really,

really productive. like the idea that

you're not just asking a AI model a

question. You're actually asking an AI

model to help you solve um a problem,

help you um you know code uh a um you

know a new you know software module or

you know help you uh plan your next

trip. Those are things that you know

just a year ago we wouldn't have thought

were possible and all of that requires

more and more compute infrastructure. So

that is probably the most interesting,

exciting, surprising thing is um for

those of us in the industry, you know,

I've never seen a technology adoption

curve like what we're seeing with AI

right now and agents are just taking it

to a whole new level.

>> You really you uh increase your total

address total addressable markets or TAM

uh for your data center business uh your

accelerator market and pretty

significantly as you look out to 2030.

Um on the topic of AI agents in 2030,

what are these agents doing that they

aren't doing today?

>> Well, let me start with the very

important thing uh to remember about AI

is you know AI is a tool. So AI is a

tool to make every one of us more

productive to make every one of our

companies more productive and so the

idea of agents is you know think about

the productivity you can get from 10

employees. I mean you got really really

smart people but if each of those 10

employees had you know 10 agents or a

hundred agents or even a thousand agents

they can be much much more productive.

And so, you know, the whole idea of

Agentic AI is uh to be able to create

sort of a closed loop um situation where

you can ask your AI to actually help you

solve more complicated problems so that

you know you as an employee can just be

much more efficient like at the end you

know the human is the one that decides

what is the right or wrong answer but AI

can help you look at a whole set of

options much much faster and more

efficiently than you have than if you

had to do it by hands and that's the

power of Aentic AI

>> within the the the technology that you

unveiled this event Helios for example

you just you just mentioned it what what

does something like that do that prior

iterations of your your products don't

do

>> yeah so one of the most important things

when we think about AI is just how many

questions can you answer and how much

does it cost so you know you hear things

like AI tokens or you know how many AI

tokens can you get per dollar you know

what Helios does is it's an incredible

feat of engineering that allows you to

scale much much uh broader in terms of

the size of the models, the types of

questions, um you know, the number of

users that can use a certain system. And

so the way to think about it is we're

seeing more than a 30 times improvement

in um performance when we look at the

new Helios systems. And you know, from a

customer standpoint, that just means you

can get a lot more done, you know, for

your money. And um the way I think about

it is it's a very positive feedback

loop, right? The more AI can do, the

more compute you need, the more compute

you have, the more intelligence you

have, um the more problems that you can

solve. And all of that relates to um the

importance and the essential foundation

is the computing layer, which is what we

do at AMD.

>> You you've mentioned this to me in the

past, Lisa, but you brought up again in

your keynote. you you're and it's one of

your philosophies or one of your beliefs

that one chip player will not win it all

uh for this AI during this AI

revolution. Why is that still the case?

>> Well, I think the most important thing

to think about, Brian, is like the world

is a very heterogeneous place, right? Um

we're all different. Our companies are

different. Our problem sets are

different. What we're trying to solve is

different. And as a result, there's not

just one chip that can do it all or one

company that can do it all. What you

really need is you need an ecosystem.

Um, you need an endto-end set of

engines. So that's what I like to say at

AMD. We have an endto-end set of compute

engines from CPUs to GPUs to FPGAAS to

A6, the ability to put all that

together. Um, and then the other thing

that we have is we have a a true belief

in an open ecosystem. So this is the

idea that the more developers we have on

AMD, the faster we can move the

ecosystem, the more progress that we can

make. And you know, that's just good for

the overall industry. So yeah, so I'm a

I'm a big believer in there's no

oneizefits-all, but there's an

incredible power in bringing the

ecosystem together and allowing us to

innovate um simultaneously. You

mentioned too as well that uh quote

customer demand uh for these new

technologies is extremely strong and I

look at how from a stock market

perspective we just saw folks react to

uh higher capex estimates from a Tesla

and an alphabet. What are our investors

missing? Because I talked to you, I

talked to others in the chip space, they

all tell me demand is strong. So why are

we so concerned about hyperscalers

raising their capex?

>> Yeah. Um I have a true belief on this.

that we have to look at the long arc you

know the long arc of technology is um I

am absolutely convinced of the power of

compute and you know when I say I think

AI compute equates to intelligence and

why wouldn't you want more intelligence

of course you want more intelligence now

the important thing is where is the

return on investment for those

investments um we are seeing the return

on investment I mean the fact is we are

ramping our own AI usage within AMD

um very significantly, you know, month

over month and we're seeing the

productivity come back in just better

products, more capable products, uh

faster time to market and that will come

out as you look at the long arc. Now

whether you know you see that on a

quarter by quarter basis, you know

obviously uh you know that's um that's

for you know others to think about but

from my standpoint the long arc it is

absolutely clear that compute demand um

is at a premium today. uh it is um the

one of the places where you can't just

wake up tomorrow and say you want more

compute. You have to make those

investments you know 12 18 24 months in

advance. Uh you have to plan the entire

supply chain and the entire ecosystem

for that. So we are um very confident in

the demand picture being there and we

are ensuring that we have all of the

pieces uh to ensure that um you know we

can uh satisfy a larger and larger piece

of the overall market.

>> This is really important stuff le you

just brought up. So you're not see

there's no leveling out uh you're not

seeing anything slow down.

>> We are not seeing that at all Brian. I

mean every conversation I have with

every large customer is how can we go

faster and um look I like I said I think

it's a fundamental belief in we believe

in the tech and uh it will return on

investment and it's going to be a very

positive cycle.

>> So you also this week too getting lost

in the sauce a little bit is this new

deal with Anthropic. You're investing $5

billion into this company. Now you had

you gave warrants to Teta, you gave

warrants to OpenAI. Why that that change

here with Anthropic? Why invest $5

billion in them?

>> Well, uh, first of all, Brian, I have to

say I'm thrilled with our new

partnership, Anthropic. I mean, there's

no question that, um, you know, they

are, you know, one of the leaders in

frontier AI models and being able to

work handinhand with their engineers is,

um, you know, really a wonderful thing.

Um, the fact is, you know, MI415 Helios

is a fantastic product. Uh we're excited

to be uh ramping with them at scale up

to 2 gawatts and think about it as every

relationship is different right we

believe in anthropic um we are uh very

happy uh to be making a strategic

investment of up to 5 billion as we work

uh together and you know this is um one

of the things about the AI ecosystem is

uh we are all in this together so it's

hardware software models uh bringing it

together in data centers ensuring that

uh we are um really tracking those

things together and and so that's

exactly what we're doing with Anthropic.

It's really aligning our strategic

interests with their interests. And you

know to your broader question um you

know we're thrilled with our overall

partnerships um across the board when

you look at open AI when you look at

Meta um these are the top AI companies

in the world that are choosing AMD uh

yes because of the technology but also

because they believe in our long-term

roadmap and the ability to collaborate

and work together to solve the biggest

problems in AI compute going forward. Is

there any concern that everyone in tech

is so intertwined?

>> I think it's always been like that,

right? I mean, I think it's an ecosystem

where we're working on this together.

And in some sense, um, I think we are

probably more aligned than we've ever

been. Uh, which is actually a really

good thing. When I say aligned, it's

because these are such large investments

over time. the more we know about um

what our customers need, the better

prepared we can be for uh for that

moment. So I think that's what um the

the AI world is such that um you need

every part of the ecosystem to come

together and and so the fact that the

ecosystem is intertwined is the way it

should be and um it's actually going to

make us more efficient long term. Lisa,

lastly, you said something on your ex

account, I think it was July 4th, that

really resonated with me and I think

ties into everything you announced um

here at this event. It's you mentioned

that your parents came to this country

as students and I've seen you over the

course of your career. I remember when

you got this job. I remember when you

acquired XYlinks. I remember when you

did the Meta deal, open eye deal, now

Enthropic. Now this moment with Helios.

These are very big moments for any

company. Uh big moments in the tech

industry. Have you had any do you

reflect on on how far you've come?

Ryan, I can say that um I view this as

the most exciting time of my entire

career and I'm extremely thankful to be

in this place. I mean, I view it as um a

true privilege and honor

computer right now. Um I love the fact

that we can contribute and make a

difference. I love the fact that the

technology that we're working on is

impacting billions and billions of

people every day. And um I couldn't ask

for a better place to be. Well, uh,

keep, uh, keep rocking there, Lisa. It's

always great, uh, to get some time with

you. Enjoy the rest of that event. I'm

I'm I'm sure you're busy. You're the

star of the hour. I'll talk to you soon.

>> Thank you so much, Brian. Take care.