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What just happened? Few could have predicted at the start of 2024 that Intel boss Pat Gelsinger would be forced out of Intel while Lisa Su is crowned CEO of the year. Intel's misfortunes over the last 12 months (and longer) are in stark contrast to AMD's success, which has been driven by Su's leadership.
Time notes that AMD's stock price has increased 50-fold in the decade since Su took over. She arrived at a firm in debt that had fired 25% of its staff, sold and leased back its Austin office, and spun off its expensive chip factories.
The company's fortunes really turned around following the launch of the first Zen architecture in 2017, but the most significant milestone came in February 2022 when AMD's market cap surpassed that of CPU rival Intel for the first time ever.
Team Red's brand value has also been climbing. Kantar BrandZ's formula for determining this value placed AMD in 41st position this year, above Intel, Disney, Samsung, and Xbox.
AMD still lives in the shadow of Nvidia when it comes to graphics cards and AI accelerators, but it has been dominating sales in the consumer processor market recently. Zen 5 was pretty underwhelming, though not as disappointing as Arrow Lake, but then the mighty AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D arrived as the new gaming king.
Almost 90% of the motherboards sold by German retailer Mindfactory during the Black Friday sales were AMD boards, and the US Amazon sales charts for both mobos and CPUs are a red wave. AMD has also gained its highest-ever share in the Steam survey's processor section.
With AMD responsible for most of the custom chips inside today's consoles and handhelds and its increasing share in a multitude of other areas, it's understandable why Time gave Su the honor. Is she a born leader?
"I don't believe leaders are born. I believe leaders are trained," Su said in an extensive interview with the publication.
Not everything has gone AMD's way this year. Bank of America downgraded the company's stock from Buy to Neutral this week, citing competition in an AI chip industry dominated by Nvidia, as well as weakening PC sales.
In 2021, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Su's cousin, appeared on the cover of Time magazine after being named one of the most influential people of the year. His image had a less AI-generated look than Su's, ironically.
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