AMD expects Helios to generate billions of dollars in its first full quarter and its AI business to more than double in 2027.
- Former AMD executive Patrick Moorhead said Nvidia is using its larger balance sheet to counter AMD’s AI gains, echoing Intel’s former playbook.
- Moorhead said major AI customers will support alternative suppliers because “nobody wants to be locked in” to Nvidia.
- Morningstar maintained its $530 fair value, implying 12% upside, but kept AMD in ‘3-star’ territory and called it a ‘hold.’
Former Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) executive Patrick Moorhead said Nvidia is using its larger balance sheet and greater resources to counter AMD’s AI advances, comparing the intensifying rivalry with AMD’s historic fight against Intel.
AMD stock rose 1% on Tuesday to end at $474.32.
Ex-AMD Exec Flags Nvidia’s Edge
“As AMD continues to innovate with their AI stack, Nvidia is leveraging their larger balance sheet and more resources even more,” Moorhead, founder and chief analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, said on X. “I experienced this same play when I was at AMD and our biggest competitor was Intel.”
Moorhead spent more than 11 years at AMD, including as corporate vice president of strategy and corporate fellow. He said Intel repeatedly expanded its offerings whenever AMD made technological progress.“We gained on product, Intel would add to their stack,” he said. “We added to the stack, Intel would vertically integrate something else.”
Moorhead argued that Intel’s eventual decline resulted from its manufacturing technology and product designs weakening simultaneously.
“Intel needed either their foundry technology or their designs to be hitting, and they all fell apart at once,” he said. “You can limp along with a less competitive design if your foundry is rocking.” Asked how AMD performed against Intel during his tenure, Moorhead offered a scorecard: “I was there 11 years. I won 4 and they won 7.”
Moorhead also suggested that major AI developers would support alternatives to Nvidia rather than remain dependent on one supplier. “Nobody wants to be locked in,” he said.
Nvidia Builds $500B AI Capital Moat
Nvidia’s advantage extends beyond GPUs, networking and its CUDA software ecosystem. The company recently announced partnerships with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR to establish financing platforms for AI factories and data centers.
It aims to mobilize more than $500 billion in third-party capital over time. The financial partners will make independent investment decisions, but the initiative could make it easier for customers to fund infrastructure built around Nvidia tech.
AMD Helios Targets Billions
AMD is challenging Nvidia with Helios, a rack-scale platform combining 72 Instinct MI455X accelerators, EPYC “Venice” processors, Pensando networking and ROCm software, alongside 31 terabytes of HBM4 memory. AMD claims advantages in performance, efficiency and tokens per dollar based on internal testing.
Speaking at KeyBanc Capital Markets’ 2026 Technology Leadership Forum, AMD executive Matt Ramsay said Helios components will begin shipping to manufacturing partners in September, with revenue ramping sharply thereafter.
“We’re going to go from a standing start to billions of dollars of revenue in the first quarter that it’s shipping for the full quarter,” Ramsay said, adding that AMD’s AI business should “double and a good bit more” in 2027. OpenAI has entered a multi-gigawatt commitment, while Meta has committed to one gigawatt. Anthropic plans to deploy up to two gigawatts of Helios capacity, with the first targeted for the first half of 2027.
AMD and Anthropic also formed a multiyear engineering partnership to optimize ROCm using Claude, alongside AMD’s commitment to invest up to $5 billion in the startup. Ramsay said Anthropic tuned its leading inference model on AMD hardware “in a weekend,” arguing that ROCm’s gap with Nvidia’s CUDA has narrowed to where “it’s not really a conversation” among top customers.
“The feedback from the customer base is phenomenal,” Ramsay said, adding that sampled racks are running customer code with “no smoking guns” in the design.
Morningstar Calls AMD A ‘Hold’
Morningstar expects Helios sales to begin in the fourth quarter and projects AMD’s server CPU business to grow about 70% in 2027, with data-center revenue potentially more than doubling.
The research firm maintained its $530 fair-value estimate. From AMD’s current price, this implies a 12% upside, with the stock trading 10.6% below Morningstar’s valuation, but still within its ‘3-star’ territory. “For lack of a better way of putting it, it’s a hold,” Morningstar said.
How Do Retail Traders Feel About AMD?
On Stocktwits, retail sentiment for AMD flipped to ‘bearish’ from ‘bullish’ levels a day ago amid a 16% rise in 24-hour message volumes.
One user said, “AMD isn't trying to find demand for its next generation of AI products. It's trying to secure enough supply to meet it. $AMD continues to be my highest conviction holding.”
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Another user said, “$AMD i’m getting the feeling that some big news is going to drop. More sales orders.”
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AMD stock has jumped 175% over the past year.
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