Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) is making a serious play for the AI infrastructure throne. At a company event this week, AMD unveiled a slew of new data-center products and announced a major partnership with Anthropic, signaling that it's not content to let Nvidia (Nvidia) run away with the market.
The headline news: AMD and Anthropic are teaming up, with AMD potentially investing up to $5 billion in the AI company. Under the deal, Anthropic will deploy 2 gigawatts of AMD's Instinct MI450 Series GPUs in AMD's Helios rack-scale systems. The first gigawatt is expected to come online in the first half of 2027. Tom Brown, co-founder and compute head at Anthropic, told Reuters that access to compute is central to keeping its Claude model competitive and meeting customer demand.
This isn't AMD's only big AI customer. The company already has a multiyear agreement with OpenAI that could generate tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue and gives OpenAI the option to buy up to about 10% of the chipmaker. CEO Lisa Su told CNBC's 'Closing Bell' from the Advancing AI event that the company sees a much larger AI infrastructure opportunity ahead, with Helios, Venice processors, and major customer deployments positioning AMD for growth.
Helios Moves Into Production
Su said AMD sees the high-performance AI computing market reaching a $2 trillion opportunity over the next four to five years. The company's Helios rack-scale system and Venice processors are now in full production, marking a major step-up in AI capability. The newest Helios systems deliver more than 30 times the performance of the previous generation, according to Su.
Customer interest is strong. Su cited Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta Platforms Inc. (Meta), AT&T Inc. (AT&T), and Cisco Systems Inc. (Cisco) as key partners. OpenAI and Meta have discussed multi-gigawatt-scale MI450 deployments, while Anthropic plans to deploy up to 2 gigawatts of MI450 in Helios systems starting in the first half of 2027.
Customer Scale And Efficiency
Su emphasized that customers are focused on tokens per dollar as AI usage grows. She said Helios offers more performance than competing systems, with a 10% to 15% performance advantage and up to a 30% benefit in tokens per dollar, helping customers improve productivity while expanding AI compute.
NVIDIA Competition Intensifies
AMD continues to challenge Nvidia, which still dominates AI accelerators and generates far more AI data-center revenue. But AMD is projecting big numbers: the AI accelerator market could reach $1.4 trillion by 2030, and AMD's broader 2030 opportunity could reach $2 trillion across AI accelerators, CPUs, and related data-center markets, Bloomberg reported.
Partnerships Broaden Opportunity
OpenAI executive Sachin Katti told Bloomberg that the company expects to deploy Helios at massive scale as it expands AI infrastructure. AMD also announced a partnership with Cerebras Systems Inc. (Cerebras) to combine Helios and Cerebras servers for AI customers focused on faster response times. Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman told Bloomberg that the companies aim to move ahead of Nvidia in that segment, with the first deployment expected in Cerebras data centers in the fourth quarter before broader commercial availability.
AMD shares were up 0.95% at $544.79 during premarket trading on Friday, approaching its 52-week high of $584.73. The message from AMD is clear: the AI race is just getting started, and AMD is coming with a full rack.
