The first female technology general to lead a company to reach 1,000 billion USD
On September 21, AMD's stock value increased by about 10%, bringing the company's market value beyond the $1,000 billion mark for the first time. Much of the information focused on the company's role in the AI wave, but there was another important milestone.
Among businesses worth over $1,000 billion, such as Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, SpaceX, Nvidia, only AMD is led by a woman. Oracle almost reached a similar milestone in the middle of last year, when it hit $925 billion under former CEO Safra Cat.
Ms. Lisa Su mentioned this achievement when attending a conference chaired by US First Lady Melania Trump last week. "It was a great moment," she said.
AMD CEO ranked 3rd on the list of the most powerful women in the world published by Fortune magazine at the beginning of the year, and is also one of the few women regularly present in meetings of technology leaders at the White House.
Ms. Su, full name Lisa Tzwu-Fang Su, was born on the island of Taiwan in November 1969. Her whole family immigrated to America 3 years later.
She and her brother were encouraged by their family to study math and science from a young age. When she was 7, her father began teaching her about calculations, while her mother guided her in business concepts. When she was young, she dreamed of becoming an engineer. "I was very curious about how things worked," she said in an interview with SFGates in 2016.
At age 10, Lisa Su began disassembling and repairing her brother's remote-controlled cars. When he was in middle school, Su was given his first computer, an Apple II, and immediately fell in love with this field. She chose electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1986, earning her bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees there.
According to MIT Technology Review, while a graduate student, Lisa Su was one of the first researchers to look at silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology, which was an unproven technique at the time but had the potential to increase transistor performance. She also defended her doctoral thesis with the topic "Silicon field-effect transistor on sub-micrometer SOI materials".
During her doctoral studies, she worked at Analog Devices, Cisco, the Global Semiconductor Alliance and the American Semiconductor Industry Association. By 2016, she had published more than 40 technical articles and co-authored several books on the consumer electronics market.
Lisa Su earned her doctorate in 1994, then worked at Texas Instruments and IBM until 1999. At IBM, she was appointed vice president of the Semiconductor Research and Development Center. She played an important role in developing a formula that helps copper interconnects work with semiconductor chips instead of aluminum, solving the problem of copper impurities contaminating the production process.
In 2000, Ms. Su moved to the role of director of emerging projects at IBM. "I was basically my own director, because there was no one else on the team," she told MIT Technology Review. However, she quickly recruited 10 people and achieved achievements in biochips.
In June 2007, she moved to Freescale Semiconductor as chief technology officer and helped Freescale find its "home" when it IPOed in 2011, according to EETimes. She left the company afterwards.
Turn AMD into a semiconductor powerhouse
Lisa Su became vice president of AMD in January 2012, during the period when the company was considered "more miserable than death", according to former CEO Patrick Moorhead. At that time, AMD was in debt of 2.2 billion USD, had to lay off 1/4 of its employees, and the price per share fluctuated at 2 USD.
Two years later, she rose to the top position - a big promotion, but also a gamble. "I believe we can build the best," Su stepped up to the podium and told employees on his second day as CEO of AMD.
That message is step one of her three-pronged plan to overcome AMD's weaknesses: create great products, strengthen customer trust, and simplify the company.
She said the secret to success is knowing where you excel. "What we're really good at is high-performance computing. We're good at putting an incredible amount of computing power into people's hands. It really took years to build that platform, but we're very determined," she said at the 2020 CTA event in the US.
As a technically savvy researcher, Ms. Su focuses on developing chips with high-performance processors on the market that can beat competitors on a number of criteria. Under her guidance, AMD engineers created the ultra-fast Zen chip architecture in three years and launched it in 2017. By 2020, the design led the market in speed.
Since then, AMD has gone beyond just being a computer chip company, partnering with NASA, Microsoft, Meta, Lenovo, Oracle and Dell.
In February 2023, AMD's market capitalization surpassed Intel's for the first time. In front of them is still a formidable opponent Nvidia, the company of Jensen Huang, a distant cousin of Ms. Su. "Being second and competent in a two-horse race with a very good lead," TD Cowen analyst Matt Ramsay said.
AMD has some important advantages to take more market share from Nvidia such as cheaper price, while performance and quality are gradually improving. Nvidia chips are still the best rated today and are constantly sought after. However, TechCrunch notes that strong demand opens the door for AMD to offer its own product as an easy and affordable alternative.
Some analysts say that OpenAI's use of AMD chips shows that the company's products are "increasingly trusted", although it cannot weaken Nvidia's dominance.
On September 28, AMD announced that it would spend 8.2 billion USD to acquire World Labs, a startup co-founded by Fei-Fei Li, who is known as the "godmother of AI". Ms. Li will join the chip company as Executive Vice President and Chief Scientist, reporting directly to CEO Lisa Su. Ms. Su said acquiring World Labs will help AMD better understand how advanced AI models are evolving, allowing it to build the chips and computer systems needed to operate them.
"We are steadfast in our mission, even more excited to continue building a world-leading advanced technology research organization, with sustainable development for decades to come," Ms. Li wrote.