What happened
Shares of Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) jumped on Monday after the chipmaker said it had won business from Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:FB).
By the close of trading, AMD’s stock price was up 10% to a record closing high of $150.16 per share.
So what
During its Accelerated Data Center Premiere virtual event, AMD debuted an array of new product offerings, including high-performance chips designed to help the semiconductor leader gain share in the fast-growing artificial intelligence market.
The big news, however, was that Meta chose AMD’s EPYC processors for its massive data center needs.
“We are in a high-performance computing megacycle that is driving demand for more compute to power the services and devices that impact every aspect of our daily lives,” AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su said in a press release. “We are building significant momentum in the data center with our leadership product portfolio, including Meta’s adoption of AMD EPYC to power their infrastructure.”
Now what
Meta said in its third-quarter earnings release that it intends to invest as much as $10 billion in its augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) products and services in just 2021 alone. Serving as one of its key technology suppliers could thus be very lucrative. Astute investors know this, and they bid up AMD’s stock price to reflect the chipmaker’s strengthening relationship with the social media — and, increasingly, AR and VR — leader.
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