How AMD CEO Lisa Su rebuilt struggling chipmaker, became a billionaire

When Lisa Su turned CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) a decade in the past, it hardly resembled a multibillion-dollar firm.

AMD inventory was languishing round $3 per share. The corporate had minimize about 25% of its employees, according to Time. However beneath Su’s management, the chipmaker has flourished: Right now, AMD has a market cap of $205.95 billion and its inventory trades at roughly $127 per share.

Su was named Time’s CEO of the Yr for 2024 on Tuesday, and the 55-year-old’s web price has soared alongside AMD’s success — as much as $1.3 billion, Forbes estimated in April. For comparability, Su was paid a base wage of $1 million and a performance-based bonus of $1.2 million in 2014 when she took over as CEO, the Seattle Times reported in 2020.

Born in Taiwan, Su immigrated to the U.S. along with her mother and father at age 3 so her father, a mathematician, might attend graduate faculty in New York. Rising up, “my father used to quiz me with math tables on the eating room desk,” she advised Forbes final 12 months. “That is how I first bought into math.” 

Su wasn’t initially occupied with following her father’s footsteps right into a STEM profession. As a young person, she dreamed of changing into a live performance pianist, she stated: “I wasn’t adequate to try this, so I turned an engineer.”

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She earned bachelor’s, grasp’s and doctoral levels in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how, and spent her early profession working in a wide range of roles at Texas Devices and IBM within the Nineteen Nineties — each large tech firms, throughout that period.

“I used to be actually fortunate early in my profession,” Su advised Time. “Each two years, I did a unique factor.”

In 2012, Su was employed at AMD as a senior vice chairman and normal supervisor of the corporate’s international enterprise items, in response to her LinkedIn profile. Two years later, she ascended to the CEO position, changing into the primary girl to guide AMD because the firm’s founding in 1969.

“I felt like I used to be in coaching for the chance to do one thing significant within the semiconductor trade,” she stated. “And AMD was my shot.”

Mates and colleagues describe her as a “shrewd strategist,” and she or he generally holds meetings on weekends and expects employees to work past midnight, Time reported. Her excessive expectations could make it difficult for folks to outlive at AMD long-term, tech trade analyst and former AMD govt Patrick Moorhead advised the journal.

That could be by design: “I do not consider leaders are born. I consider leaders are skilled,” stated Su.

Upon changing into CEO, Su promoted a three-part plan to assist AMD compete with rivals Intel and Nvidia, Time reported: promote solely high-quality merchandise, deepen buyer belief and simplify the agency’s operations. The long-term plan took time to pay dividends, however in 2022, AMD surpassed Intel in each market worth and annual income.

Nvidia, however, is not simply the world’s largest chipmaker — it recently overtook Apple because the world’s most respected publicly traded firm. However Su measures success in many years, not quarters, she stated.

“If you spend money on a brand new space, it’s a five- to 10-year arc to essentially construct out all the numerous items,” stated Su. “The factor about our enterprise is, all the pieces takes time.”

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