Who are AMD's decision-makers?

Dr. Lisa Su holds the dual role of Chair and Chief Executive Officer. An MIT-trained electrical engineer with BS, MS, and PhD degrees from MIT, she began her career at Texas Instruments and then spent 13 years at IBM, rising to VP of Semiconductor R&D and pioneering copper interconnect technology. She joined AMD in 2012 as SVP and GM of Global Business Units before becoming COO in 2013 and CEO in October 2014. Under her leadership, AMD's stock grew from approximately $2 to over $500 — a greater than 9,000% gain — representing one of the most dramatic corporate turnarounds in technology industry history. She was named Chair in 2022 following AMD's Xilinx acquisition.

Jean Hu joined as EVP and CFO in January 2023, following her tenure as CFO of Marvell Technology (2016–2022). She oversees AMD's financial strategy, capital allocation, and investor relations across a company generating $34+ billion in annual revenue. Vamsi Boppana leads AMD's Artificial Intelligence Group as SVP, driving the Instinct GPU roadmap (MI300X, MI350, MI400 series) and ROCm open-source software ecosystem — arguably the most strategically critical role given AMD's AI growth ambitions. His scope expanded in August 2024 when President Victor Peng retired; Boppana now also oversees the Instinct data center AI accelerator business. Jack Huynh became SVP and GM of Computing and Graphics in April 2023 following Rick Bergman's retirement and is responsible for Ryzen CPUs, Radeon GPUs, and AMD's semi-custom console APU business.

AMD's procurement and technology buying is distributed across business units and corporate functions. For enterprise software, cloud infrastructure, and productivity tools, the primary budget owners sit within AMD's CIO/IT organization and the relevant business unit heads. For engineering tooling, EDA software, and semiconductor design platforms, the SVP and VP-level leaders within each product group hold significant influence and direct budget authority. For AI infrastructure software, model compilers, training frameworks, and inference engines, Vamsi Boppana's AI Group is the critical decision-maker.

Given AMD's scale and rapid headcount growth, procurement decisions above a certain dollar threshold typically involve formal vendor evaluation with legal, security, and finance sign-off. CFO Jean Hu's office controls large capital expenditures and enterprise software agreements, while SVP-level leaders own departmental software and tooling budgets. For strategic partnership discussions — OEM arrangements, ISV partnerships, or technology licensing — Darren Grasby's worldwide sales organization (now with the title of Chief Sales Officer as of January 2025) is the relevant executive entry point. Engineers at AMD's Austin, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad centers are often the grassroots evaluators for developer tooling, so product-led growth motions targeting these technical communities can be particularly effective.

AMD operates with a product-led organizational structure anchored around its revenue segments: Data Center, Client and Gaming, and Embedded. Each segment is led by a dedicated SVP or EVP who reports directly to Lisa Su, giving the organization clear P&L ownership and efficient escalation paths. Lisa Su is known for driving architectural and product decisions with strong CEO-level oversight on roadmap commitments and strategic acquisitions.

As AMD has scaled from roughly 10,000 employees pre-Xilinx to approximately 31,000 by December 2025, it has had to integrate distinct corporate cultures — particularly the Xilinx engineering culture (FPGA and embedded-focused) with AMD's CPU and GPU culture. AMD's largest engineering concentration outside of Santa Clara HQ is Austin, Texas (~3,000 employees), followed by major engineering centers in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, India, which together represent a significant share of AMD's global R&D workforce. The company's global operations span more than 20 sites across six continents, with EMEA operations overseen by Darren Grasby from his UK base. The retirement of President Victor Peng in August 2024 flattened AMD's leadership structure, with both Vamsi Boppana and Salil Raje now reporting directly to Lisa Su rather than through a president layer.