In 2014, when Lisa Su took over as CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, AMD was on the verge of bankruptcy. Su bet hard on hardware and not only pulled the semiconductor company back from the brink, but also led it to surpass its historical rival, Intel, in market cap. Since the launch of ChatGPT made high-powered chips like AMDs “sexy” again, demand for chips has intensified exponentially, but so has the public spotlight on the industry — including from the federal government. In a live conversation, at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center, as part of their inaugural Discovery Series, Kara talks to Su about her strategy in face of the Trump administration’s tariff and export control threats, how to safeguard the US in the global AI race, and what she says when male tech leaders brag about the size of their GPUs. Listen to more from On with Kara Swisher here. Help us plan for the future of Pivot by filling out a brief survey: voxmedia.com/survey. Thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why is Lisa Su a pivotal figure in the semiconductor industry?
Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. I've spoken to many people here on the podcast about the AI race, and a lot of the focus has been on generative models and the companies that make them.
But the real power and a lot of the tension in the AI space is in the hardware, the semiconductor industry that is building all of that compute. My guest today has been a leader in the chips industry for more than a decade. Lisa Su, CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, better known as AMD.
When Su took over AMD in 2014, which a lot of people warned her not to do, the company was almost on the verge of bankruptcy. By 2022, AMD was thriving and has surpassed its biggest rival Intel in market cap. Last year, Su was named Time's CEO of the Year. I really always like talking to Lisa.
We have a great rapport, largely because she's a straight shooter, and she actually tells me exactly what she thinks all the time, even when we don't agree on things. She's also, unfortunately, one of the few women CEOs in tech, and so she stands out for that reason alone. But she also stands out because she's incredibly qualified for the job, and it's a big job these days.
You would think that the increased demand for the best high-powered chips to fuel the AI race would mean that Sue and Andy were just coasting, but not so. There are a lot of headwinds, not the least of which are the back-and-forth terror threats, export controls, funding cuts, and all the other chaos coming from the Trump administration in the past 100-plus days.
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Chapter 2: What challenges does AMD face in the global AI race?
And instead of just two major competitors, Intel and, of course, the now popular NVIDIA, there are a slew of other newcomers in the space to contend with, including in China. I talked to her all about that and about her strategy for this new future at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center this week. This was the third event we've done there in our joint AI Discovery Series.
It was a great conversation with a lot of insights about the state of the industry today and where it's going. And it was actually very funny. You'll see what I'm talking about when we talk about size and GPUs. So have a listen.
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It is over. Lisa, thank you so much for coming. The last time we sat down for an interview was 2021. It seems like forever ago.
It seems like forever ago, yes.
It wasn't that long ago, but a couple milestones have passed since then. In 2022, AMD passed your biggest rival, Intel, in market cap for the first time. Congrats on that. Thank you. A few months later, ChatGPT came out and basically started the AI race. And of course, most recently, President Trump launched a trade war with China. I don't know if you've heard about it, but it's happening.
Maybe a little. Maybe a little. You would have to pay a lot of attention to it. So rank these three in terms of importance of how you're thinking about your business right now, your place, your competitors, innovations, political challenges. Yeah.
Well, first of all, Cara, it's great to be here. Great to see everybody in the audience. I like talking about chips. You're going to see that from me.
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Chapter 3: How are geopolitical tensions affecting AMD's strategy?
All right. It did okay. In that realm. It did not do great, I would say. I would say it got worse and worse as it went on, as I kept arguing with it. And then it started misspelling everything egregiously, and I just said, go back to the first one.
It should have done a little better than that. No, it really didn't.
I'll show you. I'm going to send you now. I'm going to text you.
I'm going to see which model you're using. It should have done better than that.
I was using ChatGPT. Is there a better tooth fairy model for someone? I'm certainly not using XAI for tooth fairies. I'm worried about what I could get back. So I want to start with the challenges for you, for a company like yours, especially a trade war. You've just come back from a trip to Japan and Taiwan.
A majority of your chips are built in Taiwan, the world hub for the semiconductor production. That should be the 51st state, honestly, in some ways. The administration has been all—oh, that would bother China, I suspect— The administration has been all over the map on this one.
In his executive order, President Trump said there would be no so-called reciprocal tariffs on semiconductors, and he said there would be soon. Same day, Commerce Secretary Lutnick said a semiconductor tariff would be coming in a month or two, but who knows? How are you dealing with that? Talk about the challenges here.
Do you feel like you need to react to these things, or are you just sort of quietly sitting in the corner crying into your...
We are not sitting in the corner crying. We are recognizing that semiconductors are now very high priority lists on sort of all national agendas. And that is new. As nationalist agenda that is key to the security of the United States. That is definitely new. I would say 10 years ago that wasn't the case. Five years ago, maybe a little bit.
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Chapter 4: What is the impact of the CHIPS Act on U.S. semiconductor manufacturing?
And how do you do that? I'm really curious what you actually say in these meetings.
I think a lot of it is intelligence about the market. So there are two ways to approach, I think, leadership in AI. And I'm a big, big proponent of the fact that the US leads in AI today. The US leads in AI chips today. The US leads in AI models today.
Correct.
we want the U.S. to continue to lead. And to continue to lead, it means run faster. And every day, that's what we think about. When you actually ask me what I think about every day, I'm not necessarily thinking about tariffs every day, although I have people who are. I'm thinking about how do I go faster? How do we get the technology out faster? How do we get the next big innovation out faster?
How do we collaborate better with our customers faster? And that's Probably where we want to spend, like, the majority of our time. Where you'd like to spend more time. Yes, and also that would be our recommendation to the administration, frankly. We should spend the majority of our time thinking about how do we as a country go faster.
And yes, there's a piece of this that says, you know, we need to also protect our crown jewels. And we want to be part of that conversation. And the part of the conversation is, you know, these rules are actually very detailed. Like, they're not like... You can ship this and you can't ship that. They're a combination of what you think the crown jewels are.
And I don't think it's a question of should there be export controls. I think there's a question of where do you draw the line on export controls. And that's where... I'd like to believe that I can take off my AMD hat and put on my US semiconductor CEO hat and be helpful in that process of defining where to draw the line.
Where to draw the line. Now, the Biden administration also put export limits on semiconductors to China, other countries, to prevent China from getting ahead in the AI race, which was a goal. Then DeepSeat came out. Did you anticipate the Chinese would be able to train an AI chap out for less than $6 million? That number is... What's the real number?
I don't know that we need to focus on, you know, was it cheap?
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