New York, April 20, 2026, 11:36 EDT
Advanced Micro Devices slipped Monday, cooling a bit after its record-breaking surge last week. Still, analysts at Bank of America and Stifel bumped up their price targets, keeping the spotlight on the chipmaker’s AI infrastructure story. Late in the New York morning, AMD traded at $274.61, off 1.4% from Friday’s $278.39 close.
Timing is key here. AMD drops its first-quarter results on May 5, just as more analysts start to debate whether AI investment is spilling over from graphics chips into CPUs—the workhorse processors that run servers and increasingly take on AI tasks.
Morgan Stanley on Monday pointed to “agentic AI” — the kind of artificial intelligence that can plan and execute tasks independently — as a driver set to boost demand for CPUs and memory chips, not just GPUs. That opens the door for AMD and Intel to carve out bigger roles in the coming wave of chip spending, moving beyond Nvidia’s current grip on AI-focused GPUs. Even so, renewed U.S.-Iran tensions weighed on the Nasdaq that day. Reuters
On April 18, Bank of America’s Vivek Arya bumped his AMD price target up to $310, from $280, sticking with a buy call. Arya pointed to CPUs now playing “an integral part of overall AI infrastructure.” He estimated that every gigawatt of installed capacity could mean $15 billion to $20 billion in net revenue for AMD, projecting this could push data-center growth above 60% year over year in both 2026 and 2027. TheStreet
On Monday, Stifel bumped its price target up to $320 from $280 and kept its buy rating in place, market data services and Yahoo Finance’s analyst tracker show. Sell-side forecasts continued to climb, with only two weeks left before AMD’s earnings release.
It’s been a blistering run. Barron’s noted AMD ended Thursday at a record-high $278.26—marking 12 sessions up in a row, the longest streak since 2005—after Bernstein bumped its target to $265 from $235 but stuck with a market-perform call. On Friday, AMD inched even higher, closing at $278.39, according to live market data.
Meta plays a significant role here. Back in February, AMD and Meta announced they would broaden their partnership, rolling out as much as 6 gigawatts of AMD Instinct GPUs. First shipments—enough to cover one gigawatt—are expected to hit in the second half of 2026. Over five years, Reuters put the deal’s value at up to $60 billion, with a warrant attached that could hand Meta up to 10% of AMD’s stock.
Analysts aren’t just seeing a revenue bump in that deal. Matt Britzman at Hargreaves Lansdown pointed out Meta is “locking in supply” and not relying on just one vendor. TD Cowen’s Joshua Buchalter called server CPUs “indispensable assets” with agentic AI rolling out across more data centers. Reuters
AMD is coming off a solid performance. The chipmaker posted record fourth-quarter revenue of $10.3 billion, while full-year 2025 sales climbed 34% to $34.6 billion. First-quarter 2026 results are set for release after the bell on May 5.
Risks remain. Bank of America pointed to several: execution hurdles for AMD’s debut rack-scale MI400 products, uncertainty around Middle East AI project timing and scope, shaky consumer and enterprise demand, dependence on a single manufacturing partner, and a maturing game-console cycle. Reuters, meanwhile, noted renewed Iran tensions were dragging U.S. stocks from record levels and sending oil higher.
Bullish bets have spilled beyond brokerages. Over the weekend, a Seeking Alpha post laid out a $600 target for AMD. Still, shares are moving somewhere between Bernstein’s $265 call and the higher $310-$320 range set by Bank of America and Stifel—underscoring just how scattered views are with May 5 approaching.
