AMD
The CPU race just got a little more crowded
Raymond James took AMD out for a serious pep talk on Tuesday, upgrading the stock to Buy from Outperform and blasting its price target up to $641 from $565. That implies roughly 40% upside from Monday’s close, which is the kind of math that makes traders sit up a little straighter.
Analyst Simon Leopold’s thesis is pretty simple: AMD has the best combo of earnings leverage, datacenter exposure, and market-share gains. In plain English, if the CPU market keeps getting fatter, AMD has a decent shot at eating a bigger slice of the pie.
AI agents are the new CPU hype machine
The spicy part of the note is the idea that agentic AI — think autonomous AI assistants doing more than just spitting out answers — could become the next major demand driver for CPUs. Raymond James sees the CPU market swelling to about $201 billion by 2030, with huge chunks tied to conventional data center chips, AI head-end CPUs, and agentic CPUs.
That matters because AI isn’t just a GPU story anymore. If AI workloads need CPUs to orchestrate the circus, then the whole “it’s all about Nvidia” script gets a rewrite. AMD, Intel, and Arm are all in the mix, but Raymond James says AMD is the cleanest way to play the trend right now.
Intel’s not having a great day in this storyline
The note also throws some shade at Intel’s long-term share picture, with Raymond James suggesting AMD could overtake Intel by 2027. That’s not a small claim — it’s basically telling the market that one of the old CPU kings may keep losing ground while AMD keeps climbing.
- AMD already has fresh support from the Street after BMO’s bullish call
- The company is also leaning harder into AI infrastructure
- New design wins and upcoming shipments could keep the narrative hot
Big picture: this is another reminder that AMD is no longer just “the other chip company.” Wall Street is increasingly treating it like a serious AI-era CPU winner — and if that thesis sticks, your valuation models may need a bigger calculator.