AMD stock surges 320% in past year as company gains ground in AI processors for inference and agentic AI.

AMD shares have risen more than 320% over the past year, driven by demand for the company's processors for agentic AI (self-directing AI systems). In the first quarter, AMD's total revenue rose 38% to $10.3 billion, with data center sales jumping 57% to $5.8 billion.

The mix of computing needs is shifting: the ratio of CPUs (central processing units) to GPUs (graphics processing units) for agentic AI and inference used to be 1 CPU to 4 GPUs (or even 1 to 8), but is now closer to 1 to 1. AMD management revised its server CPU total addressable market estimate to $120 billion by 2030, double its previous estimate.

Nvidia still dominates data center GPUs with an estimated 86% of revenue, and Nvidia's stock has gained 82% over the past 12 months compared to AMD's gains. However, AMD's price-to-earnings ratio is 136, compared to Nvidia's P/E of 40 and the tech sector average of about 43.