AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) previewed its MI350 AI accelerators at Thursday’s AI event, but Morgan Stanley argues the real turning point will come with next year’s MI400 series.
Analyst Joseph Moore kept his Equal-Weight rating and $121 price target, noting that while the MI350 launch hit expectations, the focus remains on the rack-scale MI400/450 product for next year, which could provide the bigger inflectionif they can deliver.
The event featured customer testimonials from Meta, Oracle, OpenAI, Microsoft, Cohere and HUMAIN that were constructive but not thesis changing, Moore said. AMD also highlighted its rack-scale architecture and gave a sneak peek at the MI400 series, which early indications suggest could match Nvidia’s forthcoming Vera Rubin GPUs in performance.
However, Moore warns that near-term upside remains modest until MI400 proves itself: AI upside is considerable longer term but near-term products don’t support high convictionMI400 may change the stakes, but is still something of a show-me story.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s onstage appearance added credibility to AMD’s tens of billions revenue forecast for AI, Moore noted, even though no surprise customer deals were announced.
The company underscored its aggressive M&A strategy25 acquisitions and investments over the past yearas evidence of its resourcefulness in chasing market share against much larger rivals.
Why It Matters: With the AI accelerator market dominated by Nvidia, MI400’s successful delivery could be the catalyst AMD needs to boost its data-center compute share and validate lofty long-term growth projections.
Closing: Investors will look for early technical benchmarks and customer commitments around MI400likely unveiled in detail at next year’s Computex eventto gauge whether AMD can ignite its next AI growth phase.
This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
