TSMC posts record quarter results as skyrocketing AI and HPC demand drives two-thirds of revenue — company pulls in $33.1 billion
More telling is what this bounce tells us about AMD’s design focus. While Intel’s Meteor Lake platform continues to find traction with its integrated NPU push , AMD has leaned into gaming-first, performance-per-watt silicon . As a result, AMD has clawed back meaningful share in premium laptop designs.
On the data center side, AMD reported $4.3 billion in revenue (a 22% year-over-year increase), driven by stronger EPYC adoption and meaningful Instinct MI300X shipments. This is the first quarter in which AMD has made a serious dent in the accelerator business, which it has long trailed Nvidia in. That growth came without any revenue from China-bound MI308 shipments, which were blocked under ongoing U.S. export restrictions and domestic bans in China . AMD confirmed Q3 and Q4 guidance excludes those entirely.
The company’s focus isn’t just on GPUs; it’s also building a vertically aware, modular, open platform. Announced back in June and dubbed Helios, AMD’s cabinet reference design combines MI400-class accelerators, EPYC “Venice” CPUs, and Pensando “Vulcano” AI NICs, all connected via Ultra Ethernet . The goal is to win over hyperscalers and HPC customers looking for a coherent, Ethernet-native alternative to Nvidia’s NVLink- and InfiniBand-centric products.
AMD’s Helios pitch is part of a long-term strategy to offer a full-stack, open alternative to Nvidia’s vertically integrated systems. While Helios is built around the upcoming MI400-series GPUs, AMD’s current MI355X — its top-end CDNA 4 part for 2025 — already reflects the shift toward inference-first workloads.
With 288GB of HBM3E, support for FP4 and INT4, and aggressive focus on cost-per-token rather than peak FLOPs, MI355X is optimized for large-scale inference where memory bandwidth and low-precision throughput matter most. AMD is explicitly targeting the economics of production AI, not just training benchmarks .
Oracle, one of AMD’s largest cloud customers, is already rolling out MI300- and MI350-based infrastructure, and plans to adopt MI400-series platforms starting in 2026.
The most significant long-term threat to AMD’s data center business may not be in GPUs at all. In September, Nvidia and Intel announced an unexpected partnership that includes a custom x86 CPU built on Intel 18A, designed specifically for future Nvidia platforms. If it becomes the default attach CPU for Nvidia’s Rubin or GB300-class AI systems, AMD’s share of the server CPU footprint inside Nvidia-designed racks could shrink.
Ryzen 7 9800X3D sales help AMD hit record-breaking $2.8 billion in client revenue for Q3 2025
Nvidia posts $46 billion revenue in another record quarter
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/amd-record-quarter-shows-strength-but-data-center-dominance-could-be-out-of-reach#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.