AMD reported third-quarter 2026 revenue of $13.38 billion, up 44.7%. Driven by its datacenter business, the manufacturer significantly improved its profitability, even though its gap with Nvidia remains considerable.
Operating income reached $2.83 billion, an amount multiplied by 2.2 year-over-year. Net profit increased by 95.3% to $2.43 billion, representing 18.2% of revenue. Cash more than doubled year-over-year, to $15.78 billion.
Datacenter Takes Center Stage
Products for datacenters accounted for two-thirds of the quarter’s revenue. This segment posted $8.55 billion in sales, up 96.9%, a level above the “greater than 80%” growth target the company had announced a few months earlier. Its operating income multiplied by 2.7, to $2.88 billion, or 33.7% of its revenue.
According to the analysis author’s estimates, Epyc processor sales would reach $4.68 billion, up 116%, and Instinct GPU sales $3.43 billion, up 72.3%. Lisa Su, AMD’s CEO, stated during the analyst conference that Epyc sales to hyperscalers and cloud providers “more than doubled.”
The new-generation “Venice” Epyc processors began shipping in the third quarter, and the first equipment manufacturer systems are expected to arrive before year-end. Manufacturers already list 240 Venice platforms, 20% more than for the previous “Turin” generation. Furthermore, Helios racks equipped with MI455X GPUs have begun shipping to Meta Platforms, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Oracle.
Raised Forecasts
AMD now expects 2026 datacenter revenue to be more than double that of 2025. Its AI-related share, encompassing processors, GPUs, and DPUs, is expected to grow 50% quarter-over-quarter in Q4 2026, such that GPU sales would surpass processor sales.
For 2027, Lisa Su stated: “Our outlook for 2027 strengthens further.” She specified that server revenue should double in a year and that AI-related datacenter revenue would grow faster than expected three months ago. She added that the datacenter should represent over 80% of the company’s total revenue in 2027.
The author notes, however, that Nvidia maintains a crushing lead. In his view, AMD’s main constraint lies in access to HBM memory, essential for AI GPUs, which the company obtains in limited quantities from Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. In 2021, Nvidia generated $26.9 billion in sales versus $16.4 billion for AMD. For 2026, the author estimates Nvidia’s revenue at approximately $354 billion, compared to $52.2 billion for AMD.
