Lisa Su visits Taiwan and Korea, hoping to secure precious chip supplies as the memory crunch persists
CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Lisa Su has been meeting executives in Taiwan and South Korea.
Investors in the AI ecosystem may be reassured by the bullish outlook for the sector broadcast by the Advanced Micro Devices chair and chief executive during her tour of Northeast Asia this week, where Lisa Su has been meeting with semiconductor manufacturers and AI companies in Taipei and Seoul.
Press conferences on consecutive days underline her message: "strong demand for more compute," "AI is incredibly good for the world," and "memory is overall supply-constrained."
On Tuesday, Su met with both Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSM) and Foxconn (TW:2354) and was at pains to emphasize how important Taiwan was to AMD (AMD), thanking her suppliers while reiterating her pledge made in spring of this year to invest $10 billion there.
Wednesday saw Su in South Korea and in discussions with both SK Hynix (KR:000660) and Samsung Electronics (KR:005930) on tackling the memory crunch as demand for their high-bandwidth memory semiconductor chips continues to far exceed production. Su also attended a gamer day in Yongsan-gu, where she held talks with 13 different AI-related companies hoping to expand cooperation.
Santa Clara-headquartered AMD is a designer of semiconductor products and computer processors with a booming growth profile that has seen its stock rally more than 200% so far in 2026, and its market capitalization exceed $1 trillion in September. Su has been boosting AI accelerator production - a specialized hardware component that speeds up AI and machine learning tasks - and requires large quantities of the high-performance memory chips, including HBM4, that SK Hynix manufactures.
With Samsung Electronics, AMD has been discussing not just chip supplies but the possibility of foundry cooperation, using Samsung's most advanced process technology, according to reports.
The tour of Asia, and its commitment to investment, comes at an important juncture for the semiconductor sector as a whole. After a very strong spring and early summer, stocks stalled through August as skepticism persisted about the longevity of the current cycle with its explosive revenue growth and enormous margins.
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index SOX, for instance, dropped by roughly a third in August and only began to rebound in the second half of September. SK Hynix and Samsung are also still approximately 30% below their all-time highs in July.
Third quarter earnings will be crucial in helping analysts determine if the semiconductor supercycle still has legs but the upbeat tone struck by Su suggests fundamentals are still in favor of the big players. The Semiconductor Industry Association on Monday reported global semiconductor sales jumped 144% year over year in August.
Samsung Electronics will announce preliminary earnings on Thursday, while full third-quarter numbers from SK Hynix are due Oct. 27.
In pre-market trading Wednesday, AMD shares were 0.89% lower around $644. On the KOSPI KR:180721 exchange, Samsung shares fell 1.29% and the Nasdaq-listed depositary receipts of SK Hynix (SKHY) were indicating a fall of 0.47%.
-Jules Rimmer