AMD Briefly Tops $1 Trillion Market Value; Cramer Says the Run Isn't Over
Advanced Micro Devices briefly crossed $1 trillion in market value before slipping back below it on Monday, with CNBC's Jim Cramer saying agentic AI demand for CPUs leaves the chipmaker's run intact.
"Lisa Su has orchestrated one of the greatest turnarounds in history at AMD, arguably the greatest of all time, and I see no sign that it's going to stop any time soon," Cramer said Monday, according to CNBC.
The shares rallied nearly 13% last week and have gained almost 30% in September alone, CNBC reported. Cramer tied part of the latest move to Meta's launch of Muse, its personal AI agent platform.
Cramer said wider adoption of AI agents should drive significant demand for central processing units, a market in which he said AMD "remains the leader." He said investor attention shifted earlier this year from AI model training to inference and agentic computing, which he said made clear that CPU demand was going to explode because running useful AI agents requires more CPUs.
The trillion-dollar milestone follows a sharp reversal from October 2014, when Su took over as CEO. At that time the company was worth just over $2.5 billion and was losing market share to rival chipmaker Intel, according to CNBC. AMD shares have since risen more than 18,000% as Su refocused the company and steadily gained share in CPUs.
Alongside CPUs, AMD has carved out a foothold in the graphics processors used for AI workloads, taking on Nvidia in a market Cramer described as large enough to support multiple winners. He said AMD has already secured major commitments for its GPUs from some of the biggest AI spenders, including Meta and OpenAI.
"Nvidia's still the top dog in AI chips, but AMD's making big money, too, and [Su's] products are more competitive than people think," Cramer said. "Nvidia literally can't make their own chips fast enough to satisfy the demand. Of course there was room for AMD here."
Cramer said the size of the advance leaves the stock vulnerable to pullbacks, while the longer-term opportunity remains intact. "What an incredible run," he said. "Thanks to Lisa Su's understated, dogged, tenacious leadership, she transformed a $2.5 billion company into a nearly trillion-dollar powerhouse."
CNBC disclosed that Cramer's Charitable Trust, the portfolio run by the CNBC Investing Club, owns shares of INTC, META and NVDA.