Lisa Su, CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, testifies during the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing titled “Winning the AI Race: Strengthening U.S. Capabilities in Computing and Innovation,” in Hart building on Thursday, May 8, 2025.
Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday unveiled new details about its next-generation AI chips, the Instinct MI400 series, that will ship next year.
The MI400 chips will be able to be assembled into a full server rack called Helios, AMD said, which will enable thousands of the chips to be tied together in a way that they can be used as one “rack-scale” system.
“For the first time, we architected every part of the rack as a unified system,” AMD CEO Lisa Su said at a launch event in San Jose, California, on Thursday.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared on stage on with Su and said his company would use the AMD chips.
“When you first started telling me about the specs, I was like, there’s no way, that just sounds totally crazy,” Altman said. “It’s gonna be an amazing thing.”
AMD’s rack-scale setup will make the chips look to a user like one system, which is important for most artificial intelligence customers like cloud providers and companies that develop large language models. Those customers want “hyperscale” clusters of AI computers that can span entire data centers and use massive amounts of power.
“Think of Helios as really a rack that functions like a single, massive compute engine,” said Su, comparing it against Nvidia’s Vera Rubin racks, which are expected to be released next year.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman poses during the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit, at the Grand Palais, in Paris, on February 11, 2025.
Joel Saget | Afp | Getty Images
AMD’s rack-scale technology also enables its latest chips to compete with Nvidia’s Blackwell chips, which already come in configurations with 72 graphics-processing units stitched together. Nvidia is AMD’s primary and only rival in big data center GPUs for developing and deploying AI applications.
OpenAI — a notable Nvidia customer — has been giving AMD feedback on its MI400 roadmap, the chip company said. With the MI400 chips and this year’s MI355X chips, AMD is planning to compete against rival Nvidia on price, with a company executive telling reporters on Wednesday that the chips will cost less to operate thanks to lower power consumption, and that AMD is undercutting Nvidia with “aggressive” prices.
So far, Nvidia has dominated the market for data center GPUs, partially because it was the first company to develop the kind of software needed for AI developers to take advantage of chips originally designed to display graphics for 3D games. Over the past decade, before the AI boom, AMD focused on competing againstIntel in server CPUs.
Su said that AMD’s MI355X can outperform Nvidia’s Blackwell chips, despite Nvidia using its “proprietary” CUDA software.
“It says that we have really strong hardware, which we always knew, but it also shows that the open software frameworks have made tremendous progress,” Su said.
AMD shares are flat so far in 2025, signaling that Wall Street doesn’t yet see it as a major threat to Nvidia’s dominance.
AMD
Courtesy: AMD
Andrew Dieckmann, AMD’s general manger for data center GPUs, said Wednesday that AMD’s AI chips would cost less to operate and less to acquire.
“Across the board, there is a meaningful cost of acquisition delta that we then layer on our performance competitive advantage on top of, so significant double-digit percentage savings,” Dieckmann said.
Over the next few years, big cloud companies and countries alike are poised to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build new data center clusters around GPUs in order to accelerate the development of cutting-edge AI models. That includes $300 billion this year alone in planned capital expenditures from megacap technology companies.
AMD is expecting the total market for AI chips to exceed $500 billion by 2028, although it hasn’t said how much of that market it can claim — Nvidia has over 90% of the market currently, according to analyst estimates.
Both companies have committed to releasing new AI chips on an annual basis, as opposed to a biannual basis, emphasizing how fierce competition has become and how important bleeding-edge AI chip technology is for companies like Microsoft, Oracle and Amazon.
AMD has bought or invested in 25 AI companies in the past year, Su said, including the purchase of ZT Systems earlier this year, a server maker that developed the technology AMD needed to build its rack-sized systems.
“These AI systems are getting super complicated, and full-stack solutions are really critical,” Su said.
What AMD is selling now
Currently, the most advanced AMD AI chip being installed from cloud providers is its Instinct MI355X, which the company said started shipping in production last month. AMD said that it would be available for rent from cloud providers starting in the third quarter.
Companies building large data center clusters for AI want alternatives to Nvidia, not only to keep costs down and provide flexibility, but also to fill a growing need for “inference,” or the computing power needed for actually deploying a chatbot or generative AI application, which can use much more processing power than traditional server applications.
“What has really changed is the demand for inference has grown significantly,” Su said.
AMD officials said Thursday that they believe their new chips are superior for inference to Nvidia’s. That’s because AMD’s chips are equipped with more high-speed memory, which allows bigger AI models to run on a single GPU.
The MI355X has seven times the amount of computing power as its predecessor, AMD said. Those chips will be able to compete with Nvidia’s B100 and B200 chips, which have been shipping since late last year.
AMD said that its Instinct chips have been adopted by seven of the 10 largest AI customers, including OpenAI, Tesla, xAI, and Cohere.
Oracle plans to offer clusters with over 131,000 MI355X chips to its customers, AMD said.
Officials from Meta said Thursday that they were using clusters of AMD’s CPUs and GPUs to run inference for its Llama model, and that it plans to buy AMD’s next-generation servers.
A Microsoft representative said that it uses AMD chips to serve its Copilot AI features.
Competing on price
AMD declined to say how much its chips cost — it doesn’t sell chips by themselves, and end-users usually buy them through a hardware company like Dell or Super Micro Computer — but the company is planning for the MI400 chips to compete on price.
The Santa Clara company is pairing its GPUs alongside its CPUs and networking chips from its 2022 acquisition of Pensando to build its Helios racks. That means greater adoption of its AI chips should also benefit the rest of AMD’s business. It’s also using an open-source networking technology to closely integrate its rack systems, called UALink, versus Nvidia’s proprietary NVLink.
AMD claims its MI355X can deliver 40% more tokens — a measure of AI output — per dollar than Nvidia’s chips because its chips use less power than its rival’s.
Data center GPUs can cost tens of thousands of dollars per chip, and cloud companies usually buy them in large quantities.
AMD’s AI chip business is still much smaller than Nvidia’s. It said it had $5 billion in AI sales in its fiscal 2024, but JP Morgan analysts are expecting 60% growth in the category this year.
The company rolled out the Meta AI app in April, putting it in direct competition with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. But the tool has recently garnered some negative publicity and sparked privacy concerns over some of the wacky — and personal — prompts being shared publicly from user accounts.
Besides the mud wrestlers and Trump eating poop, some of the examples CNBC found include a user prompting Meta’s AI tool to generate photos of the character Hello Kitty “tying a rope in a loop hanging from a barn rafter, standing on a stool.” Another user whose prompt was posted publicly asked Meta AI to send what appears to be a veterinarian bill to another person.
“sir, your home address is listed on there,” a user commented on the photo of the veterinarian bill.
Prompts put into the Meta AI tool appear to show up publicly on the app by default, but users can adjust settings on the app to protect their privacy.
Here’s how to do it:
To start, click on your profile photo on the top right corner of the screen and scroll down to data and privacy. Then head to the “suggesting your prompts on other apps” tab. This should include Facebook and Instagram. Once there, click the toggle feature for the apps that you want to keep your prompts from being shared on.
After, go back to the main data and privacy page and click “manage your information.” Select “make all your public prompts visible only to you” and click the “apply to all” function. You can also delete your prompt history there.
Meta has beefed up its recent bets on AI to improve its offerings to compete against megacap peers and leading AI contenders, such as Google and OpenAI. This week the company invested $14 billion in startup Scale AI and tapped its CEO Alexandr Wang to help lead the company’s AI strategy.
The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A One Medical clinic location is pictured in Emeryville, California on February 16, 2024.
Loren Elliott | The Washington Post | Getty Images
For the better part of a decade, Amazon has been trying to carve it’s way into the U.S. health-care market, through billions of dollars worth of acquisitions, big-name hires and high-profile partnerships. It’s been a slog at times, and the company’s long-term strategy hasn’t always been clear.
Following a series of executive departures, Amazon is now restructuring its health business, telling CNBC that Amazon Health Services will be divided into six new units, with a goal of creating a simpler structure.
As part of the effort, the company has tapped a number of longtime Amazon leaders and elevated some One Medical executives to oversee the divisions. Neil Lindsay, senior vice president of Amazon Health Services told CNBC in an interview that the company has been working on the overhaul for the past several months.
“Our leadership team has been focused on simplifying our structure to move faster and continue to innovate effectively,” Lindsay said in a video chat. “One of the problems we’re trying to solve is the fragmented experience for patients and customers that’s common in healthcare.”
Amazon said it hasn’t conducted broad layoffs as part of the changes.
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The reorganization comes after Amazon lost several senior health leaders in recent months. Dr. Vin Gupta, who joined in 2020 and served as chief medical officer of Amazon Pharmacy, left in February, followed by Trent Green, whose last day as CEO of Amazon’s primary care chain One Medical was in April.
Aaron Martin, vice president of health care at Amazon, announced internally last month that he plans to leave his role. Dr. Sunita Mishra, Amazon’s chief medical officer, also departed in May.
Mishra and Martin’s departures have not been previously reported, and neither responded to requests for comment. Amazon doesn’t plan on naming a new CEO of One Medical following Green’s departure.
Martin, who lives in Nashville, Tennessee, said in a memo to staffers that he’ll remain at Amazon “for a while” to help with the transition.
“I then plan to take some time off this summer and hang out with my wife and my kids, finally get a cover band going in Nashville, and then possibly do something new,” Martin wrote in the memo, which was shared with CNBC.
Ambitious efforts
Amazon has for years been on a mission to crack the multitrillion-dollar U.S. health-care industry, which is notoriously complex and inefficient.
While it had long served providers and others in health care with its cloud-based technology, Amazon’s first big splash directly into the market came in 2018 with the the acquisition of online pharmacy PillPack for about $750 million. Two years later, it launched its own offering called Amazon Pharmacy.
The company then bought One Medical for $3.9 billion in 2023, among its largest acquisitions ever, giving Amazon access to a chain of brick-and-mortar primary care clinics and a robust membership base.
There have been some major setbacks. The company shuttered its telehealth service, Amazon Care, in 2022. That came a year after it disbanded Haven, the joint health-care venture between Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase. The announcement of Haven in 2018 sent shockwaves through the medical world, pushing down shares of health-care companies on fears about how the combined muscle of leaders in technology and finance could wring costs out of the system.
In the areas where Amazon continues to operate, competition is fierce and, in the case of primary care, margins are very slim.
PillPack founders TJ Parker and Elliot Cohen, who left Amazon in 2022, recently launched a new health-care marketplace called General Medicine that will compete with Amazon. Mishra confirmed to STAT News that she advised the nascent startup. Amazon declined to comment on whether Mishra’s involvement with General Medicine was related to her departure.
Lindsay characterized the recent departures as part of the natural evolution of Amazon’s health business. He added that there’s “no shortage of depth of talent” within his organization.
“We’re a fast-evolving organization because the opportunity is so big,” Lindsay said.
Under its new structure, Amazon Health Services will be focused around the six groups, or what the company calls “pillars.”
One Medical Clinical Care Delivery, led by Dr. Andrew Diamond
One Medical Clinical Operations and Performance, led by Suzanne Hansen
AHS Strategic Growth and Network Development, led by John Singerling
AHS Store, Tech and Marketing, led by Prakash Bulusu
AHS Compliance, led by Kim Otte
AHS Pharmacy Services, led by John Love
Amazon declined to share financial figures for its health business, but Lindsay said it is seeing “very strong growth” across the offerings.
One Medical went public in 2020, and it was still losing money when it was bought by Amazon. At the end of 2022 in its last quarter as a standalone entity, it reported a net loss of $101.1 million on revenue of $272.4 million.
Since joining Amazon, One Medical has been working to open new offices in states including New Jersey, New York and Ohio.
Amazon said in January of 2024 that its pharmacy business “doubled the number of customers” it served in the past year, though it didn’t share specific figures. The company is opening pharmacies in 20 new cities this year, and about 45% of U.S. customers will be eligible for same-day medication delivery.
“If we can make one thing a little bit easier for a lot of people, we’ll save them a lot of time, a lot of money, and some lives,” Lindsay said. “And if we stack these changes up over time, it’ll feel like a reinvention.”
The electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle, or eVTOL, company said Thursday it plans to use the financing to support new infrastructure and the rollout of an artificial intelligence-based aviation software platform. The money will also support its Launch Edition program, including an official partnership to provide air taxi services during the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
Archer said the funding round included the sale of 85 million shares at $10 apiece and gives the company a pro forma liquidity position of roughly $2 billion.
“We now have the strongest balance sheet in the sector and the resources we need to execute both here in the U.S. and abroad,” said founder and CEO Adam Goldstein in a release. “Archer’s future couldn’t be any brighter.”
The stock offering comes after President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order that created a pilot program to support developing and deploying more eVTOL vehicles in the U.S. Shares of both Archer and competitor Joby Aviation rallied this week on the heels of the news.
Demand for eVTOL companies has ballooned in recent years as developers tout the technology’s ability to reduce emissions and cut down traffic congestion. The technology faces numerous regulatory and safety hurdles in the process.
Archer has already partnered with United Airlines to roll out an airport air taxi service. Last month, competitor Joby Aviation said it received the first $250 million from a $500 million contract with carmaker Toyota to support certifying and producing eVTOLs.
Archer is slated to display its Midnight eVTOL aircraft at the Paris Air Show this month. The United Arab Emirates will be the company’s first launch market.