Ryan Knudson

It was founded in the late 1960s, and it's based in Santa Clara.

When Sue joined the company in 2012, it was mainly focused on chips for individual computers and electronics, known as CPUs.

But when she took over as CEO two years later in 2014, she saw some holes in AMD's strategy.

Sue started focusing on the chips that were critical for cloud computing, an area that exploded over the last 15 years.

And the strategy paid off, and it helped AMD become a major player in a market that had long been dominated by Intel.

But the pivot proved consequential for another reason.

It gave AMD a foothold in data centers, which had become critical in the rise of AI.

After the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, Sue saw an opportunity to pivot the company again.

This time, Sue wanted to take aim at NVIDIA.

Back then, NVIDIA wasn't a household name.

But it was clear to Sue that it was on the rise.

We're going to bet the whole company on it, basically.

We're betting the whole company on it.

By the way, NVIDIA's CEO, Jensen Huang, and Su were actually distant cousins.

They only met as adults.

Fast forward, you know, two to three years.

How does that pivot go?

Like, what does she actually do?

To take on NVIDIA, Su decided to focus on chips that were one step ahead.

Rather than making chips that are good at training AI models, which has dominated the AI market so far, Su wanted to make chips that were good at inferencing.