AMD's data center revenue nearly doubles to $8.5B as Helios racks start shipping

Revenue was $13.38 billion against $9.25 billion a year ago and $11.54 billion in the second quarter[1]. GAAP gross margin was 54% and GAAP net income $2.43 billion, or $1.46 a share. On a non-GAAP basis, gross margin was 56%, operating income $3.92 billion and earnings per share $2.09, up 74%[1].

"We delivered a record quarter with revenue exceeding the high end of our guidance as Data Center segment sales nearly doubled year-over-year," chair and CEO Lisa Su said[1].

The Data Center segment brought in a record $8.55 billion, up 97% from $4.34 billion a year earlier and up from $6.72 billion in Q2[1]. AMD credits strong demand for EPYC server processors and the launch of its Instinct MI450 Series GPUs[1]. The segment now makes up about 64% of AMD's revenue, up from 47% a year ago[2], and earned $2.88 billion of operating income, compared with $1.07 billion a year earlier[1].

The rest of the business was mixed. Client and Gaming revenue fell 8% to $3.72 billion: PC processor sales rose 7% to $2.95 billion, but gaming revenue fell 40% to $773 million on lower semi-custom and graphics revenue. Embedded revenue rose 29% to $1.11 billion[1].

AMD says Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure are now running models and workloads on its first Helios rack-scale systems, which pair Instinct MI450 GPUs with 6th Gen EPYC CPUs[1]. HPE said Vultr will deploy the first Helios systems sold by HPE, and the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking picked Instinct MI430X GPUs and 6th Gen EPYC for the LUMI-AI supercomputer[1].

The release also lists AMD's agreements to acquire World Labs and inference chip startup Taalas, the release of its ROCm 10 software stack, and the Threadripper Halo Station, a workstation AMD says can run trillion-parameter models locally[1].

For the fourth quarter, AMD expects revenue of about $17 billion, plus or minus 3%. At the midpoint, that is about 66% growth year over year and 27% quarter on quarter, with a non-GAAP gross margin of about 55%[1]. Su said on the earnings call that AMD expects revenue to grow more than 80% in 2027, with data center as the largest contributor[3].

A year ago, AMD's data center business was under half of its revenue. It is now nearly two thirds, and the guide implies another big step up as Helios and "Venice" EPYC production ramp[1][2]. With Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI among the named Helios customers, several of the biggest AI buyers are now running models and workloads on AMD racks[1].