Time named Lisa Su CEO of the Year in 2024 for her work at AMD’s helm. The choice may seem surprising given Nvidia's spectacular year, led by Su’s cousin, Jen-Hsun Huang.
However, this choice reflects more than financial results. It highlights a leadership style often overlooked in Silicon Valley.
When Su took charge of AMD in 2014, the company faced technical bankruptcy. Its stock traded at less than $3, its data center market share was negligible, and the question wasn’t whether AMD would survive but how long it could last. A decade later, the stock sits at $130, the company is worth more than Intel, and its chips power the world’s two most powerful supercomputers.
And the “how” is even more compelling. At a time when many tech CEOs focus on personal branding, Su stands out as a leader who understands technology inside and out.
Her MIT Ph.D. is in electrical engineering, not business. When a new chip needs evaluation, she heads to the lab. If technical problems arise, she doesn’t need a translator. At AMD, strategy meetings focus on engineering, not marketing.
This technical focus has been a considerable advantage. Su knows exactly where to place bets. While the mainstream industry pursued the smartphone market, Su doubled down on AMD’s strength: powerful processors.
She developed a new architecture, Zen, that reshaped the industry. Instead of media spectacles, she prioritized customer-supplier relationships. AMD’s quiet dominance has been especially evident in the data center, where Intel has faced delays and manufacturing issues. Meanwhile, AMD has delivered powerful and efficient chips with precision—no noise, no fanfare.
AMD’s data center share has grown to 34%. The transformation has been stealthy but devastating, leaving Intel far behind.
Not everything is perfect, though. AMD lags behind Nvidia in GPUs for gaming and AI systems. Its $5 billion AI chip estimate this year pales next to Nvidia’s dominance, with nearly 95% of the marke.
The challenge isn’t just hardware. Nvidia’s software ecosystem, CUDA, has become the de facto AI standard. Developers write code with Nvidia chips in mind, giving Nvidia a significant edge that AMD may need years to erode.
AMD’s strategy here is deliberate: patient progress instead of bold promises. It targets niches like AI inference, where energy efficiency outweighs raw performance, and forges alliances with giants like Meta, eager to avoid reliance on Nvidia.
The results demonstrate a deeper lesson: A CEO’s understanding of the company’s technology outweighs the influencer approach. Su’s success suggests deep knowledge trumps charisma in technology leadership.
The next challenge is clear: Can AMD catch up to Nvidia in the AI chip business? In the short term, it seems unlikely. Nvidia’s software lead is formidable. Long-term, however, Su’s track record proves significant transformations don’t require fireworks—just technical vision, determination, and patience.
A decade after taking charge of a dying company, Su has shown that true technology leaders don’t need to be rock stars. Sometimes, all it takes is a brilliant engineer with a plan.
Image | AMD
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