AMD is laying off workers as it focuses on AI
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is cutting 4% of its global workforce as it focuses on competition in the artificial intelligence chips space.
“As a part of aligning our resources with our largest growth opportunities, we are taking a number of targeted steps that will unfortunately result in reducing our global workforce by approximately 4%,” a spokesperson for AMD said in a statement shared with Quartz on Wednesday. “We are committed to treating impacted employees with respect and helping them through this transition.”
The cuts target sales and marketing roles in some divisions including consumer PC and gaming PC, Bloomberg reported, citing an unnamed person familiar with the matter. The company is reportedly still hiring.
AMD shares fell by around 2.3% during mid-day trading on Wednesday.
In October, AMD reported third-quarter revenues of $6.8 billion — slightly above Wall Street’s expectations.
“Looking forward, we see significant growth opportunities across our data center, client and embedded businesses driven by the insatiable demand for more compute,” AMD chief executive Lisa Su said in a statement.
Earlier that month, AMD launched its Instinct MI325X accelerators and Ryzen AI PRO 300 series processors, along with other leading-edge computing chips, at its Advancing AI conference. Like rival Nvidia (NVDA), AMD is on “an annual cadence” with releasing new chips, Su said.
“The data center and AI represent significant growth opportunities for AMD, and we are building strong momentum for our EPYC and AMD Instinct processors across a growing set of customers,” Su said.
With its new chips, AMD is “delivering leadership compute to power our customers’ most important and demanding workloads,” she added. By 2028, AMD sees the market for data center AI accelerators reaching $500 billion, Su said, adding that the chipmaker is “committed to delivering open innovation at scale through our expanded silicon, software, network and cluster-level solutions.”
This story has been updated to include a statement from AMD.
