Lisa Su displays an ADM Instinct M1300 chip as she delivers a keynote address at CES 2023 at The Venetian Las Vegas on January 04, 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
David Becker | Getty Images
AMD said on Tuesday its most-advanced GPU for artificial intelligence, the MI300X, will start shipping to some customers later this year.
AMD’s announcement represents the strongest challenge to Nvidia, which currently dominates the market for AI chips with over 80% market share, according to analysts.
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GPUs are chips used by firms like OpenAI to build cutting-edge AI programs such as ChatGPT.
If AMD’s AI chips, which it calls “accelerators,” are embraced by developers and server makers as substitutes for Nvidia’s products, it could represent a big untapped market for the chipmaker, which is best known for its traditional computer processors.
AMD CEO Lisa Su told investors and analysts in San Francisco on Tuesday that AI is the company’s “largest and most strategic long-term growth opportunity.”
“We think about the data center AI accelerator [market] growing from something like $30 billion this year, at over 50% compound annual growth rate, to over $150 billion in 2027,” Su said.
While AMD didn’t disclose a price, the move could put price pressure on Nvidia’s GPUs, such as the H100, which can cost $30,000 or more. Lower GPU prices may help drive down the high cost of serving generative AI applications.
AI chips are one of the bright spots in the semiconductor industry, while PC sales, a traditional driver of semiconductor processor sales, slump.
Last month, AMD CEO Lisa Su said on an earnings call that while the MI300X will be available for sampling this fall, it would start shipping in greater volumes next year. Su shared more details on the chip during her presentation on Tuesday.
“I love this chip,” Su said.
The MI300X
AMD said that its new MI300X chip and its CDNA architecture were designed for large language models and other cutting-edge AI models.
“At the center of this are GPUs. GPUs are enabling generative AI,” Su said.
The MI300X can use up to 192GB of memory, which means it can fit even bigger AI models than other chips. Nvidia’s rival H100 only supports 120GB of memory, for example.
Large language models for generative AI applications use lots of memory because they run an increasing number of calculations. AMD demoed the MI300x running a 40 billion parameter model called Falcon. OpenAI’s GPT-3 model has 175 billion parameters.
“Model sizes are getting much larger, and you actually need multiple GPUs to run the latest large language models,” Su said, noting that with the added memory on AMD chips developers wouldn’t need as many GPUs.
AMD also said it would offer an Infinity Architecture that combines eight of its M1300X accelerators in one system. Nvidia and Google have developed similar systems that combine eight or more GPUs in a single box for AI applications.
One reason why AI developers have historically preferred Nvidia chips is that it has a well-developed software package called CUDA that enables them to access the chip’s core hardware features.
AMD said on Tuesday that it has its own software for its AI chips that it calls ROCm.
“Now while this is a journey, we’ve made really great progress in building a powerful software stack that works with the open ecosystem of models, libraries, frameworks and tools,” AMD president Victor Peng said.
Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 21st, 2025.
Gerry Miller | CNBC
Coinbase is joining the S&P 500, replacing Discover Financial Services in the benchmark index, according to a release on Monday. Shares of the crypto exchange jumped 8% in extended trading.
The change will take effect before trading on May 19. Discover is in the process of being acquired by Capital One Financial.
Since going public through a direct listing in 2021, Coinbase has become a bigger part of the U.S. financial system, with bitcoin soaring in value and large institutions gaining regulatory approval to create spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds.
Bitcoin spiked last week, topping $100,000 and nearing its record price reached in January.
However, Coinbase has been a particularly volatile stock and is trading well below its peak from late 2021. The shares closed on Monday at $207.22, giving the company a market cap of $53 billion. At its high, the stock traded at over $357.
Stocks added to the S&P 500 often rise in value because funds that track the S&P 500 will add it to their portfolios.
The index, which is heavily weighted towards tech because of the massive market caps of the industry’s heavyweights, continues to add companies from across the sector. In September, Dell and defense software provider Palantir were added to the S&P 500, following artificial intelligence server maker Super Micro Computer and security software vendor CrowdStrike earlier last year.
To join the S&P 500, a company must have reported a profit in its latest quarter and have cumulative profit over the four most recent quarters.
Coinbase last week reported net income of $65.6 million, or 24 cents a share, down from $1.18 billion, or $4.40 a share a year earlier, after accounting for the fair value of its crypto investments. Revenue rose 24% to $2.03 billion from $1.64 billion a year ago.
Also last week, Coinbase announced plans to buy Dubai-based Deribit, a major crypto derivatives exchange for $2.9 billion. The deal, which is the largest in the crypto industry to date, will help Coinbase broaden its footprint outside the U.S.
Coinbase shares are down 17% this year, underperforming bitcoin, which is now up about 10% over that stretch.
Perplexity AI is in late-stage talks to raise $500 million at a $14 billion valuation, a source familiar with the situation confirmed to CNBC Monday.
Accel, the Palo Alto-based venture capital firm, will lead the round, according to the source, who spoke anonymously because the round is not yet finalized. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the late-stage numbers.
The funding is on the lower end of Perplexity’s planned raise, which CNBC reported in March. During those early-stage talks, Perplexity was looking to raise between $500 million and $1 billion in funding at an $18 billion post-money valuation, per a source familiar.
Perplexity has just under $100 million in annual recurring revenue, or ARR, the source told CNBC in March.
Perplexity has been in the middle of the generative AI boom that began in late 2022 with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and it’s betting big on its upcoming AI agent web browser, called Comet. But Perplexity faces increasing competition in the AI search market.
In March, Anthropic launched its web search product, allowing its chatbot Claude to display real-time search results to a subset of users.
Last fall, OpenAI launched a search feature within ChatGPT, its viral chatbot, that positioned it to better compete with Perplexity, as well as leading search engines such as Google and Microsoft‘s Bing.
Google has released AI Overviews within its search product as well, though it sparked controversy over high-profile errors soon after its release.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, center, watches during the inauguration ceremonies for President Donald Trump, right, and Vice President JD Vance, left, in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 20, 2025.
Wall Street and Apple investors cheered the pause on Chinese tariffs. Apple stock was up 6% in trading on Monday, versus 3% for the Nasdaq.
“I spoke to Tim Cook this morning, and he’s going to, I think, even up his numbers,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “$500 billion, he’s going to be building a lot of plants in the United States for Apple. And we look forward to that.”
Apple previously said in February it would spend $500 billion to expand many of its operations in the U.S., including assembling AI servers in Houston.
Any cooling of a U.S.-China trade war is expected to boost Apple, which does the majority of its device production in the country, and also counts the region as its third-largest by sales.
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Still, it’s not clear how much Monday’s announcement immediately helped Apple.
In April, most of Apple’s most important products, such as smartphones and computers, received exemptions on some of the highest 145% tariffs, but there are still 30% tariffs on Chinese imports even after Sunday’s deal. Apple still faces 10% tariffs in some of its secondary production locations, such as India and Vietnam.
The Trump administration wants Apple to bring device production, including iPhone manufacturing, to the United States, a move that many experts believe would be unlikely and expensive.
Earlier this month, Cook told investors about the company’s tariff strategy on an earnings call. He said that Apple is currently sourcing American-bound products from production locations in Vietnam and India, but didn’t want to speculate beyond June, calling the situation “difficult to predict.”