AMD
AMD’s AI elevator is still going up
AMD showed up to its Technology Leadership Forum 2026 and basically said: the server and data center story is getting bigger, faster, and somehow still not done. Management said server revenue grew more than 50% in Q1 and more than 70% in Q2, then added that second-half 2026 growth should top 80%.
And if that wasn’t enough caffeine, AMD also tossed out an early 2027 outlook: at least 70% server revenue growth, with broader data center revenue — including AI — expected to grow well above 100%. That’s the kind of guidance that makes investors sit up a little straighter.
The Helios plot twist
The company’s Helios AI rack system is the next big piece of the puzzle. AMD said it plans to start shipping components to manufacturing partners in September, with a ramp expected in the fourth quarter and another leg up in the first quarter after that.
The pitch here is simple:
- More AI inference demand
- More agentic computing buzz
- More server CPU share
- Hopefully, more revenue that actually sticks
AMD says it has 1-gigawatt commitments from Meta and OpenAI, plus a 1-gigawatt pledge from Anthropic. It’s also expecting deployments through Oracle Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and other cloud providers. In other words: the order book is starting to look less like a hope-and-pray deck and more like an actual pipeline.
Software, chips, and the usual Nvidia comparison
AMD also spent time talking up ROCm, its AI software stack, saying the gap versus Nvidia’s CUDA ecosystem has narrowed enough that software is no longer the giant headache it used to be. That matters, because in AI, the hardware is only half the sandwich. The other half is whether developers can actually make the thing sing.
On the CPU side, AMD said its next-gen Venice server chips are already sampling to customers, with Florence due in 2028. The company also said its x86 share in server CPUs has jumped from 0.4% to the high-40% range, which is a pretty dramatic glow-up for a business that used to be the underdog in every room.
Big picture
This is still a story about execution, supply, and whether AMD can turn splashy commitments into shipped racks and booked revenue. But the market usually loves two things: growth and optionality. AMD just handed out a fresh serving of both.