Advanced Micro Devices shares rose 13.85% on Friday to close at $347.61 after Intel reported a stronger-than-expected first quarter, pushing AMD's market capitalization to $497.79 billion.
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, whose company reported first-quarter earnings of 29 cents per share on $13.58 billion in revenue, framed the results as evidence that the CPU remains central to production AI workloads. "the backbone of AI computing in production remains a CPU-anchored architecture," Tan said, adding that this reality "is good news for the x86 ecosystem."
The move extended AMD’s recent run: the stock has rallied approximately 56% since March 30, up from a previous close of $305.33, and traded in the post-market at roughly $349.00 to $349.07, an additional 0.40%–0.42% gain. AMD also shows year-over-year revenue growth of 34.34%, a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 45.58x and short interest of just 2.23%.
Intel’s Data Center and AI segment — the specific business investors watched for read-through to AMD — generated $5.1 billion in revenue, grew 22% year over year and saw operating margins expand to 30.5% from 13.9% in the year-ago quarter. Markets parsed that beat as a validation of demand for x86 server CPUs and the EPYC thesis that underpins bullish calls on AMD.
Market participants described Friday’s jump as driven almost entirely by read-through from Intel’s report rather than by AMD-specific news, with traders treating Intel’s outperformance as confirmation that enterprise CPU demand is accelerating. Intel’s results topped expectations widely: earnings came in at 29 cents versus a consensus range of 1 cent to 2 cents, and revenue of $13.58 billion exceeded forecasts near $12.42 billion.
Tan pushed the narrative on architecture ratios and future workloads: he said the CPU-to-GPU ratio has shifted from roughly 1:8 in traditional AI training environments to about 1:4 today, and suggested it could move "towards parity or even better" as agentic AI workloads drive inference and orchestration work. He also said Intel’s outlook for server CPU demand "has improved over the last 90 days" and predicted "a strong year of double-digit unit growth... with momentum extending into 2027."
The tension for investors is visible in the numbers. AMD’s sales momentum and 34.34% annual revenue rise underpin the rally, but the stock now trades at a forward P/E of 45.58x, a valuation that requires continued execution and growth to justify. At the same time, Intel’s bullish case for a CPU-anchored production stack can bolster both firms: the x86 ecosystem could benefit broadly even as markets awarded the near-term premium to AMD on Friday.
Short interest of 2.23% suggests limited immediate downside pressure from bears, but the market’s enthusiasm has already driven AMD toward a near-$498 billion valuation. Traders will be watching whether that optimism is warranted when AMD reports its next quarterly results on May 5 — the next major event on the calendar.
The single consequential question now is whether AMD’s May 5 earnings print will deliver numbers and guidance that validate a 45.58x forward P/E and a market cap just under $498 billion, or whether Friday’s surge will prove to be a re-pricing based chiefly on Intel’s read-through rather than on fresh AMD fundamentals.
