CEO Lisa Su saved AMD. Now she's capitalizing on gen AI | Fortune

AMD’s Lisa Su saved the chipmaker. Now the CEO is poised to capitalize on the explosion of generative AI

AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su
AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su
Jerod Harris—Getty Images for Vox Media

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Taylor Swift is a billionaire, some women working in Utah’s tech scene report mistreatment, and AMD CEO Lisa Su is prepared to capitalize on the explosion of generative AI. Have a relaxing weekend!

– Chip on her shoulder. The explosion of generative AI is spurring growth across the technology industry—including in hardware. One under-the-radar CEO taking advantage of this massive growth is Lisa Su, the leader of Advanced Micro Devices, or AMD.

The 54-year-old chipmaker was best known for its rivalry with Intel. But it’s now “the number two player in GPUs—the type of chips that are so well suited to training AI models like OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s Bard,” Fortune‘s David Meyer reports in a new story. A 2006 acquisition of the Canadian chipmaker ATI set AMD up to capitalize on this moment. It’s now second to Nvidia in the market.

AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su
Jerod Harris—Getty Images for Vox Media

Su will soon begin her 10th year at the helm of AMD. She previously worked as an electrical engineer at IBM and joined AMD in 2012. The CEO is widely credited with saving the company, whose stock is up 73% over the past five years. Now, she predicts the AI chip market will be worth $150 billion by 2027.

“I think this is an opportunity for us to write the next chapter of the AMD growth story,” she told David. “There are so few companies in the world that have access to the [intellectual property] that we have and the customer set that we have, and the opportunity frankly to really shape how AI is adopted across the world. I feel like we have that opportunity.”

Read David’s full story—including much more technical detail, for the wonks among you!—here.

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe

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ALSO IN THE HEADLINES

- Swift Inc. A new estimate from Bloomberg puts Taylor Swift in rarefied territory: that of a billionaire. Record-breaking demand for her Eras tour has propelled her net worth to a reported $1.1 billion. "She’s one of the few entertainers to reach that status based on music and performing alone, the result of work and talent, but also canny marketing and timing," Bloomberg reports. Bloomberg

- Baby boom or bust? To combat a slump in birth rates, Hong Kong will start paying parents HK$20,000 ($2,556) for every child they have until 2026. That number pales in comparison with other countries’ payments, however, and is barely enough to cover the average monthly rent for a Hong Kong apartment. CNN

- Location discrimination. More tech companies are moving their headquarters from Silicon Valley to "Silicon Slopes" in Utah, one of the U.S.'s most conservative states that scores alarmingly low on women's equality. Women who once worked at tech companies in Utah, or still do, told Insider they were subject to unfair gender stereotypes, were passed over for promotions, experienced sexual harassment, or witnessed the unfair treatment of other female employees. Insider

- Overruled. Canada’s nine-person Supreme Court will have more women than men for the first time after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau nominated Mary Moreau as the court’s fifth female judge. The selection is Trudeau’s sixth and reflects his administration’s long-held effort to diversify the court. He previously appointed the court's first non-white and indigenous judges. The Guardian

- Under the Zfluence. Her Campus Media, the family of media brands targeting college women and run by CEO Stephanie Kaplan Lewis, announced it acquired Zfluence, a marketing platform where companies can partner with Gen Z consumers. The company was founded by Ava McDonald when she was a senior at Georgetown University in 2019. Axios

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Five9 announced Niki Hall as chief marketing officer. Unilever promoted Esi Eggleston Bracey to chief growth and marketing officer. 

ON MY RADAR

The startling candor of Helen Garner The New Yorker

VC founders: to create the next Sequoia, do it ‘from the ground up’ The Information

The makings of a literary it girl Nylon

PARTING WORDS

"Sometimes I’d rather not explain what I want something to sound like, I’d rather just do it."

—British singer and musician PinkPantheress on subverting traditional producers and making her own sound

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