How AMD CEO Lisa Su Became a Billionaire in the AI Era

• Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, has officially become a newcomer to Forbes’ billionaires list.
• Her fortune is estimated at $1.3 billion and she runs a company that is essential to the generative AI boom.
• AMD, like its cousin-led rival Nvidia, supplies the chips needed to run AI applications such as ChatGPT.

The generative AI boom has given birth to its new billionaire: Lisa Su.

The 54-year-old from Taiwan’s former capital Tainan may not be a household name like many of her Silicon Valley peers.

But after a nearly decade-long tenure at the helm of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Su’s quiet rise to the top of the U.S. tech industry is starting to attract long-overdue attention.

The CEO of the Santa Clara tech giant, which supplies GPU chips to companies seeking computing power for AI applications, became one of the newcomers to Forbes’ annual billionaires list released this week.

This is a significant milestone for Su, whose net worth is now estimated at $1.3 billion. She took over AMD in 2014, when it was rumored to be on the verge of bankruptcy. She is now ready to take the company to new heights to take on her billionaire cousin, Nvidia chief Jensen Huang, who is worth an estimated $77 billion.

Here’s how Su got to this point and what might await her in the age of AI.

Lisa Su’s billionaire journey

Su, whose family moved to the United States when she was three, seemed destined to follow the path her career took her.

After majoring in electrical engineering at MIT and studying for her master’s and Ph.D. In college, Su entered the world of semiconductors and chips, holding positions at blue-chip companies like Texas Instruments and IBM, before joining AMD in 2012.

Her role as senior vice president and general manager of AMD’s global business units would ultimately prepare her for the CEO role two years later, but success was not guaranteed.

His predecessor, Rory Read, left behind a company with billions of dollars in debt, struggled to gain traction for expensive processors it had invested heavily in, and was overshadowed by rivals like Intel.

But after agreeing to a compensation package that encouraged efforts to improve stock performance – she accepted a lower base salary than Read, $850,000, but received more than six million shares – Su launched a relaunch of AMD. The stock has risen more than 60 times since Su became CEO in 2014, according to Forbes.

By focusing on a radically different processor design known as Zen, first released in 2017, Su has restored industry confidence in the company’s ability to deliver critical computing components with powerful power. and significantly higher energy efficiency. The newer versions of these processors are used by everyone from Microsoft to Sony in gaming consoles like the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, for example.

Underrated

Although she resurrected AMD from a market cap of around $2 billion when she took over, Su hasn’t always gotten her due.

In a notorious incident on the grid at the Shanghai International Circuit in 2018, former Formula One driver Martin Brundle inadvertently insulted Su after asking if she spoke English. His answer ? She was there as a sponsor of F1’s most successful team, Ferrari.

Being underestimated is still a reality for Su in the generative AI boom.

As his company looked to expand its GPU division – now in high demand due to demand for OpenAI and Meta – it was massively overshadowed by rival Nvidia.

Nvidia CEO Huang, a once-distant first cousin of Su, grew his company to a valuation of more than $2.2 trillion by convincing the AI ​​industry that its GPUs and the community around them have an advantage over those of its rivals. In contrast, AMD is worth $278 billion.

But Su is clearly up for a challenge. In December, it unveiled AMD’s new MI300X chip as a rival to Nvidia’s flagship offering, calling it “the industry’s most advanced AI accelerator.”

Companies like Sam Altman’s OpenAI plan to use these chips, which AMD hopes to reach $1 billion in sales by mid-2024. The company also forecasts greater growth in the AI ​​sector in the coming years, as it targets a valuation of $400 billion by 2027.

For Su, that means there’s a lot to play for, as AI companies show no signs of being interested in disappearing computing power. Su’s billionaire journey may just be beginning.