CEO of the Year Lisa Su Talks Competition and Collaboration in the Semiconductor Industry

Lisa, thank you so much for being here tonight with your husband. We're honored to have you here as Time's 2024 CEO of the Year. I will start with an easy question. President Trump takes office in a few weeks. Will the new administration be good or bad for the chip industry? Why don't we go back to the Kate and Clark-like numbers, you know? I like that, that was a very nice introduction. First of all, Sam, Jess, you know, thank you so much. This is such an honor to be here and such an honor to be amongst this company. You know, the truth is, you know, we all think about what might happen, but the most important thing for our business and probably most businesses is just having certainty on what's going to happen. So, you know, since the election, I think all of us in business have been, you know, thinking about, you know, just what the next four years projects, and I think we are optimistic about, you know, business. We're optimistic about the opportunities. Obviously, in the semiconductor world, for us and chips, we're a little bit of a sensitive topic. We'll get into that. Yes, but overall, I think certainty is a good thing. Good. You have, in the past, called AI the transformational technology you've seen in your career. I'm curious, for this crowd, what do most people get wrong about AI? Well, let me ask. So, how many people in the audience, like, use AI every day? That's pretty good. That's pretty, I think that is the most amazing thing. That's why I believe AI is the most important technology that I've certainly seen in my career. And, you know, back to what, you know, people may not quite understand is two things. One is we're at the very, very, very beginning of AI. So, whatever you think you're doing today that seems amazing, it's going to be 10 times more amazing, like, even 12 months from now, because we're at the very early part of the learning curve. And because we're learning, it's not always going to be right. And so, the fact that AI is not right today doesn't mean that it's not the most important, you know, technology ever. And, you know, Sarah is sitting right here at our table. You know, the street always wants the answer today or tomorrow. It might take a little bit longer than that. But I think over the next, this is a five to 10 year cycle that we're in. And we're at the very beginning of the cycle. And that's what's so, you know, exciting about it. I'd love to get into some of the geopolitical issues that you and your company sit across. Today, AMD's most advanced chips are made outside the United States. When will they be made here? So, you know, I would maybe even take a step back and say, you know, five years ago, nobody thought about where chips were made, right? Nobody thought about where do you get your next chip? And that is what has really changed for our industry is, you know, chips are now at the backbone of everything. Like, everything you do, whether it's something in your business or something in your home or, you know, something in your community, you know, goes through, like, probably thousands of chips a day. And that's what makes it so important. And I think the turning point was actually during the pandemic, when people couldn't get enough chips. Like, if you remember, you know, people were wondering, like, why were, why were the, you know, the cars, you know, constrained because you didn't have enough chips? Why, why couldn't you get your computers when you needed it? And that's when it became important as to where you can actually manufacture chips. So, yes, from a political standpoint, geopolitical standpoint, it wasn't that important five or 10 years ago. So, it wasn't something the United States focused on. And since then, it's become super important. It's become, you know, with the Chips Act and everything else. And actually, what that has done is it's put so much more investment into this area over the last few years. So, you know, I think it will take us probably the next five plus years to rebuild manufacturing in the United States. But it's going. And it's actually going faster than, you know, some might have thought. But to go back to my question, will you be able to make your most advanced chips in the United States? We will. And that will be in five years? I would say in the next three to five years, you'll start seeing the most advanced chips. You move that forward three years. I like that. Yes. Well, in Arizona right now, I mean, Arizona is like the center of some of the most advanced chips in the country. And we're getting our first chips off the line and they're looking quite good. You talked about being at the beginning of this cycle. There are some reports that AI is actually plateauing. Isn't that bad news for AMD? First of all, I don't agree with them. Why not? Because, again, this is the view of whenever we see technology cycles, they're actually arcs. So, you know, you get a new innovation and it takes you so far and then you need the next new innovation and it takes you the next, you know, five plus years and then you see the next. And I think we're just at the initial waves of AI. So today, what people want is larger and larger computers. You talk about supercomputers. We just had every six months, they talk about, they rank actually the fastest supercomputers. And we just had a couple of supercomputers that were just built. We'll have a faster one like a year from now. And the innovation that happens when you have all of this engineering talent come together, there are lots of new ideas, lots of new algorithms out there. And probably what I find most exciting about AI is that you can think about AI solving a broad set of issues. Like you think about chat GPT today, you can ask it questions. You can, we're talking about some of the things that you might do with time. You can see the ability to transfer lots of general information. But there's also a really interesting part of AI that how you can go really deep and solve some of the world's hardest problems. This idea that you can accelerate the rate and pace of medical discovery. I'm really interested in how AI and healthcare come together because healthcare is so personal to all of us. We all have family, friends that have been impacted by various diseases. If we can accelerate drug discovery, if we can accelerate finding some of these, the next wave, I believe you can do that with the next set of AI. So I don't think we're anywhere near plateauing. I think you might need to do it a different way. And we've always had this notion as engineers that when you reach a roadblock, you find your next set of ideas to go forward. Well, speaking of doing it a different way, AI requires a massive amount of energy. Is it making our climate worse? Is it harming our planet? I think we are all in this place where power is one of the key things that we think about. How do we get enough energy for what we want to do? You do need a lot of energy to run these massively powerful systems. I think AI can also help us conserve energy in the sense that it'll help us solve problems in a different way so that you won't have to necessarily take as long. One of the most interesting parts of AI is it should be able to help us get to the answer. Some problems that might have taken months or even years to simulate, like if you think about some of the latest drug discoveries and how long things take, you can imagine a time when that might be done in days or weeks. And so that's how you see the trade-off between energy and more computing power. China just opened an antitrust investigation into NVIDIA. Are you worried that a geopolitical fight between China and the U.S. will harm your business? So there's a lot of discussion about the U.S. and China and what that means. Clearly, chips have become something that are so important from a national security standpoint, and we recognize that. There are some chips, for example, that are so special that we can't ship to China, that we can't ship to certain other restricted countries. I think balance is always important in these things. Look, China's also an important market for us. We think about China as there are lots and lots of uses of semiconductors, and we'd like to have balance in this. It's so important. We talked about the new administration at the top. What's really important is for there to be a good dialogue between sort of the public sector and the private sector. I think there's a lot of partnerships that are necessary. That's true in most industries. That's certainly very true in our industry. And the key is that we want to have the ability to protect national security while also ensuring that we have access to the Chinese market. Those who work with you say you're a competitive person. Is that okay? It's fantastic. Is there a day when AMD will be bigger than NVIDIA? You know, competition is a good thing, but I believe that there are multiple winners in this market. And the key for us is, are we putting out new technology? Are we putting out technology that is changing the world? Are we helping solve some of the world's most important problems? Those are really, really important. And at the end of the day, you know, who's bigger, who's smaller? We'll see. We'll see how that plays out. I think the challenge is on. Speaking of competition, there's an opening in the CEO's office at Intel. Who should take it? You know, Sam, this was supposed to be a pleasant dinner, wasn't it? I think they're having a great time. Look, I have a lot of respect for Pat as a colleague. So I've known him for many, many years. It is hard to turn around a semiconductor company. Let me start with that. So there are, you know, the thing about our industry is that the decisions that you make today, you actually won't see the fruits of that labor for like five years. I mean, that's the case. It's like a five year cycle. It takes that long to design products, to think about technology, to think about markets going forward. So, you know, I would say it's a tough job. It's a tough job. Has the Biden administration encouraged you to merge with Intel? I think the answer to that question is no. So I can answer that question. I think what we're all looking for is how do we make the U.S. industry stronger, right? You know, the U.S. leads in semiconductors today, in semiconductor design. We have been fortunate enough, you know, with Silicon Valley, with all of the intellectual property that we've developed over the last many years for just the innovation in our culture, you know, that goes with startups, but also with larger, more advanced companies. You know, we've actually acquired a number of companies over the last few years, and it's added a lot to the equation. You know, we're going to continue to do that. I mean, as an industry, we're going to continue to push the envelope on technology. And, you know, I think that's something that we should be really proud of, right? We want to have the best chips. We want to have the best computers. We want to use those computers to solve the most difficult problems. And, you know, how we do that as an industry is partnering. Like, actually, you know, we are partnering, you know, with Intel on a number of things. We're partnering with many of the companies in the semiconductor industry because there's no one company that has all of the good ideas. It is a place where we absolutely have to come together, and there are places where we're going to compete, and there are places where we're going to collaborate. I think one of the things that stands out in reading and listening to people talk about your journey as a leader is the points in time where you decided not to do something when people were encouraging you to do that. We often talk about leadership as what you do, but it's just as frequently what you choose not to do. Is there a moment in time, a decision that sticks out for you where you said everyone was telling you to go this way, and you said, no, we have to go that way? Probably the most striking moment in time is, you know, whenever you think about technology, people always are most interested in what you're doing today. Like, what's the fad of today? So when I first took over as CEO, it was 2014 and 2015 time frame, and the fad was not fad is not the right word, but the more interesting thing was, you know, you're so excited about your next Apple iPhone, right? You're so excited about the next tablet that you're going to buy, and people were asking, my board was asking me, Lisa, why are we not, like, doing that? Like, why are we not in phones? Why are we not in tablets? And the truth was, you know, those are fine businesses to be in, but they're not AMD. Like, AMD, like, we build big computers. That's what we do. We build big computers, and many of you may not have heard about AMD, certainly, you know, ten years ago, maybe five years ago. Hopefully in the last year you've heard us from time to time. We build big computers, and big computers were not sexy ten years ago, but they're kind of sexy now, right? You're talking to me about AI. I'm lucky enough to sit amongst this audience, and I think that's the key. The key is to be very clear on what you want to be best at, and it doesn't have to be the most popular thing, but it has to be something that you know will make a difference. Well, Lisa Sue, thank you for making supercomputers sexy. Thank you.