AMD's data center sales nearly double in third quarter

What happened

AMD reported on Tuesday 3 November that third-quarter revenue was $13.4 billion, up 45 percent from a year earlier, with Data Center segment revenue up 97 percent to $8.5 billion. ^[1]

The company's net income was $2.4 billion, up 95 percent, and diluted earnings per share was $1.46 on its standard (GAAP) accounting. Client and Gaming revenue was $3.7 billion, down 8 percent, and Embedded revenue was $1.1 billion, up 29 percent. The release says Gaming alone was down 40 percent because of lower semi-custom and graphics revenue. ^[1]

Chief executive Lisa Su said in the release: 'We delivered a record quarter with revenue exceeding the high end of our guidance as Data Center segment sales nearly doubled year-over-year.' ^[1]

Why it matters

By the desk's arithmetic on the release's segment table, Data Center was about 64 percent of revenue, up from about 47 percent a year earlier, as CNBC also reported. Its $8.5 billion is $4.2 billion more than the $4.3 billion of a year before. ^{[1, 2]}

AMD said the segment was driven by demand for EPYC server processors and the launch of Instinct MI450 Series GPUs, the chips that run AI models. ^[1]

The outlook

For the fourth quarter of 2026, AMD said it expects revenue of about $17 billion, plus or minus 3 percent, and a non-GAAP gross margin of about 55 percent. The company said the midpoint implies growth of about 66 percent from a year earlier and 27 percent from the third quarter. ^[1]

Su said on the conference call that adoption of AI agents is 'just starting', and AMD expects server revenue to double in 2027, Dataconomy reported. On an October visit to Taiwan, she said AMD had secured the wafers, memory and other parts for 'much higher growth next year'. ^[3]

What settles it next

AMD's fourth-quarter results will be the filed record against the $17 billion outlook; neither the release nor the press reports give a date for them. The release carries its outlook as forward-looking, and says actual results could differ materially. ^{[1, 3]}

Who it reaches

AMD (AMD) is direct: the figures are its own. Nvidia (NVDA) is adjacent: CNBC and Dataconomy both describe AMD's Helios rack systems as competing with Nvidia's Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin products. ^{[2, 3]}

Meta (META) is adjacent: Meta said its Helios racks are operating, and AMD invested $1 billion in Meta's equity offering, Dataconomy reported. Microsoft (MSFT) and Oracle (ORCL) are adjacent: the release lists both among the companies running models on the first Helios systems, and Oracle's cloud arm among the buyers of 6th Gen EPYC instances. ^{[1, 3]}

Anthropic and OpenAI, also named as Helios users, have no ticker. AMD has committed to invest up to $5 billion in Anthropic, Dataconomy reported. ^{[1, 3]}