AMD can't make AI chips as fast as customers want them, and CEO Lisa Su says that won't change soon. Speaking to reporters in Taipei on Tuesday, she said the company will "substantially increase our supply in 2027, but we can definitely use more." If you're shopping for a PC or graphics card, this matters to you too, because AI servers draw on the same small group of suppliers.
Su said AMD raised output through 2026 and demand still came in higher. She expects "very, very high demand for the next several years" and said AMD needs more capacity on advanced wafers, the leading-edge chip production mostly handled by TSMC (TSM). This was her third trip to Taiwan this year. She met Acer, Asus, Foxconn and Quanta, and had TSMC on her schedule for later in the day.
Booking factories five years out
The most telling detail is how far ahead AMD now plans. Su said capacity planning used to look one to two years out. Now it runs "three, four, or even five years," because wafers, packaging and substrates all have to be ready at the same time. TrendForce reports that AMD's MI450 AI chips went into production at TSMC on a 2nm process in the third quarter, and that the MI455 is due in the first half of 2027. AMD hasn't given those dates itself, but Su told analysts in August that Helios, the rack system built around the MI450, was "now in production".
The orders are real. In February, Meta (META) signed up for as much as 6 gigawatts of AMD Instinct GPUs, with the first gigawatt due to start shipping in the second half of 2026. Su also said AMD will invest more in Taiwan's supply chain, on top of the more than US$10 billion it announced in May.
The part that reaches your desk
The headlines are about GPUs, but Su also pointed to memory. Reuters reports that AMD is locking in supply from Samsung and SK hynix, and TrendForce says Samsung will provide HBM4, the stacked high-speed memory, for AMD's next GPUs. Su didn't talk about consumer prices. Still, those two companies also make the DRAM in laptops and gaming cards, and research firm TrendForce says memory makers are steering capacity toward AI servers, which keeps ordinary memory in short supply.
TrendForce expects contract prices for regular DRAM to rise another 10% to 15% in the last three months of 2026 compared with the quarter before. It says laptop makers are still buying hard because they expect supply to stay tight in 2027. Those are prices between chipmakers and PC brands, not store prices, but they tend to filter through to what you pay.
"Substantially more" is a promise, not a number, and Su didn't put any figures on it. AMD's next earnings call is the place to look for real capacity numbers. AMD hasn't confirmed the date yet, but it's expected around November 3, based on when it reported last year.
Sources
- 1.AMD plans to substantially increase supply in 2027, CEO says · Reuters (via WTVB)
- 2.AMD CEO Sees Very High Chip Demand, Urges AI Firms to Cooperate · Bloomberg (via Yahoo Finance)
- 3.AMD's Lisa Su Visits TSMC, AI Supply Chain Partners as Company Locks In Capacity 3 to 5 Years Ahead · TrendForce
- 4.AMD and Meta Announce Expanded Strategic Partnership to Deploy 6 Gigawatts of AMD GPUs · AMD
- 5.AI Server Demand Sustains Memory Contract Price Increases in 4Q26, While Consumer-Side Pressure Persists, Says TrendForce · TrendForce
- 6.AMD (AMD) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript · The Motley Fool
- 7.Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Earnings Date and Reports 2026 · MarketBeat
Reported by the WattsUpNext desk from the sources linked below. Spot an error? Tell us at corrections@wattsupnext.com.
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