AMD's 57% data center jump squeezes crypto GPU supplies

AMD's data center segment pulled in $5.775 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2026, a 57% year-over-year jump. Total revenue hit $10.253 billion, up 38% from a year earlier. Non-GAAP earnings per share landed at $1.37.

The company secured separate agreements with Meta and OpenAI for up to 6 gigawatts of GPU capacity using its Instinct accelerators. Meta's deal involves a custom MI450 chip, a sign AMD is willing to co-design silicon for its largest customers. Shipments from both agreements are expected to ramp in the second half of 2026.

AMD's stock surged about 274% from early July 2025 to early July 2026. Nvidia gained roughly 24% over the same period.

AMD has a long history in crypto mining. The company partnered with Bitmain on Bitcoin mining hardware and built Security Crypto Engine IP into its FPGA product lines. During the 2017-2018 and 2020-2021 GPU mining booms, AMD's Radeon cards were a staple of Ethereum mining rigs.

AI workloads now command premium pricing that crypto mining cannot match on a per-GPU basis. The Meta and OpenAI commitments consume significant CoWoS packaging capacity at TSMC, the same advanced packaging used for Radeon gaming and mining GPUs. That means fewer Radeon cards available for the spot market, and higher prices for the remaining stock.

AMD's $300 billion addressable market thesis, first laid out after its Xilinx acquisition in 2022, was initially met with skepticism. Cloud providers desperate to diversify supply chains away from a single GPU vendor created an opening AMD has aggressively exploited.

AMD's FPGA lineup, with embedded crypto security features, continues to serve blockchain infrastructure use cases. The company's Alpha Score sits at 61 out of 100, a Moderate rating in the Technology sector.

The Meta and OpenAI deals will begin shipping in the second half of 2026, adding another leg to data center revenue.