New York, May 31, 2026, 06:22 EDT
- AMD was last at $516.10 after the U.S. market closed Friday, trading close to its highs from May.
- The stock gained roughly 10% last week as the Nasdaq and S&P 500 both finished at new record highs.
- Next up for chip stocks: Broadcom earnings, the latest U.S. jobs figures, and what Nvidia’s Windows PC move means for risk appetite in the sector.
AMD stock starts the week just under record highs after jumping last week. Buyers are still in on the AI chip rally, though the trade could get tested by fresh economic numbers and competition from other names.
U.S. cash trading is shut for the weekend, leaving Friday’s numbers as the latest mark. AMD shares finished at $516.10, a tick lower from the prior close, but still up from $467.51 a week earlier. The stock reached $527.20 on Thursday.
AMD is standing out as a way for investors to play AI spending that isn’t Nvidia. The broad rally looks extended but still keeps going, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite closing at new highs Friday. The Nasdaq gained 2.39% for the week. “There’s euphoric sentiment” around AI, Wells Fargo’s Ohsung Kwon said, but he noted the move up is “driven by earnings.” Reuters
AMD has a high bar to clear on earnings. Earlier this month, the company guided for second-quarter revenue of $11.2 billion, give or take $300 million, topping Wall Street’s estimates as demand for its data-center chips stayed strong. Data-center sales surged 57% in Q1 to $5.8 billion. Jake Behan, head of capital markets at Direxion, said the quarter proves AI compute demand “is real,” but noted the focus now is turning that demand into higher-margin revenue. Reuters
Graphics processing units, or GPUs, handle tough computing jobs like AI model training and inference, which kicks in once AI apps are built. AMD is still behind Nvidia in GPUs, but its CPUs, the core chips for PCs and servers, offer a separate path into cloud and enterprise budgets.
The field is getting tighter. Nvidia and Microsoft are expected to roll out the first Windows PCs powered by Nvidia main processors next week, Reuters said, citing Axios. Qualcomm already offers Arm-based CPUs for Windows laptops. Intel and AMD are still the biggest players in that market.
China shows a different story for chipmakers. Reuters reported Friday that AMD CEO Lisa Su kept a lower profile in China than Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, with both navigating U.S.-China chip tensions. Nvidia’s share of the China AI-chip market has dropped from 50% to almost nothing in a year, Huang said. IDC puts AMD at about 4% of China’s AI-chip sales. Su said China makes up about 20% of AMD revenue and that the company will “partner very closely” with Chinese customers. Reuters
But there’s an obvious risk scenario. If the U.S. jobs report lands hot on June 5, after stubborn inflation numbers, bond yields could jump and pressure pricey growth names. Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at the Schwab Center for Financial Research, said that combination could “change the outlook for Fed policy.” AMD is also seeing higher memory costs for PCs and gaming and execs expect second-half PC shipments to dip and gaming revenue to fall more than 20% from the first half. Reuters
Broadcom is up next with earnings set for Wednesday, just ahead of the jobs report. Reuters said the numbers could move Wall Street given the sharp rally in semiconductors. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index is up roughly 80% from its March 30 low, so a miss will get extra attention.
AMD goes into the week focused on holding together its AI momentum, supply levels, and margins, without getting sideswiped by anything big on the macro front. The share price already reflects plenty of optimism. Now the company has to keep delivering.
