AMD's CEO Claims Their New Chips 'Match' Nvidia's at a Lower Price, and Even Sam Altman Is Excited: 'An Amazing Thing' AMD controls 14.3% of the AI chip market compared to Nvidia's 85.2%.
By Sherin Shibu Edited by Melissa Malamut
Key Takeaways
- AMD CEO Lisa Su said at a launch event on Thursday that AMD’s new chip "matches" the performance of Nvidia's "more expensive and complex" chip.
- Nvidia dominates the AI chip market, with over 80% of market share by some estimates.
- AMD and Nvidia both saw record revenue last year.
Though Nvidia is the undisputed leader in AI chips, capturing over 80% of the market, AMD CEO Lisa Su says AMD's latest chips are "outperforming" Nvidia's with "greater efficiency."
Su said at an AMD launch event on Thursday in San Jose, California, that AMD's new MI350 chips are up to 35 times faster than previous generations, per Bloomberg. The MI350 chips began shipping out earlier this month.
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When it comes to running AI programs, Su claims that AMD's MI355 chip offers "greater efficiency" compared to Nvidia's B200 and GB200 chips, which were released in 2024. She said that the MI355X chip "matches the performance of the significantly more expensive and complex [Nvidia] GB200" at a lower price point. Demand has pushed up the price of AI chips, which can each cost tens of thousands of dollars, according to The New York Times. Nvidia's chips can cost up to four times more than competing AMD chips.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made an appearance on stage with Su at the event to say that his company would use the latest AMD chips.
"It's going to be an amazing thing," Altman said at the event, per CNBC.
AMD CEO Lisa Su. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Su said that the MI355 chip processes 40% more tokens, or units of text that AI models use to understand and process knowledge, compared to chips from competitors like Nvidia.
"MI355 can deliver up to 40% more tokens per dollar than competing solutions," Su said at the event.
Despite Su's assertions that AMD chips are more efficient than Nvidia's, Nvidia leads the AI chip market with 85.2% of the market share compared to AMD's 14.3%, according to estimates shared with Bloomberg by global research firm IDC.
Other companies place Nvidia even further ahead. Jon Peddie Research, a leading analysis firm, reported last week that Nvidia had 92% of the market for AI chips in the first quarter of 2025, compared to 8% for AMD.
Nvidia and AMD are the industry leaders in advanced computer graphics chips, which are foundational to AI development. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in September that his biggest worry was intense demand for AI technology, as tech companies pour billions of dollars into investments in AI infrastructure. Some of Nvidia's biggest clients, including Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, have each pledged tens of billions of dollars towards AI spending this year.
In turn, Nvidia and AMD have also grown their bottom line.
Nvidia achieved a record full-year revenue of $130.5 billion, up 114% from a year ago, for the fiscal year ending Jan. 31. Analysts predict that Nvidia's AI chip sales will rise to $262 billion by 2030.
AMD also set a new record in 2024, with revenue of $25.8 billion, up 24% year-over-year. The company had a market capitalization of $190 billion at the time of writing, compared to Nvidia's $3.49 trillion.
