Lisa Su, the chief executive of this chipmaker, has delivered a spectacular performance at the helm. When she joined the company as an executive in 2012, it was on the brink of bankruptcy. After officially taking the CEO role in 2014, Su reshaped the business with her signature humility and deep passion for technology, turning it into Nvidia's most formidable rival. She spearheaded several major deals, including the acquisition of Xilinx, and forged a partnership with Meta, under which the social media giant could eventually hold up to 10% of the company's shares. Under Su's leadership, the stock has climbed steadily, and this year the market has finally given full credit to her achievements. Riding the wave of a broad rally in technology stocks, the company's shares surged 9.9% on Monday, pushing its market capitalization above $1 trillion for the first time. The stock is now up an impressive 185% year-to-date, far outpacing rival Nvidia's 22% gain. Advanced Micro Devices (ASX: AMD): trading at $621.03, up $5.51 or 0.90%, as of 10:12:03 a.m. Eastern Time, with the market open. The chipmaker has delivered a string of strong results this year, driving the stock steadily higher. Earlier this month, the company beat Wall Street expectations across all metrics for the second quarter, posting record non-GAAP earnings per share of $1.66, against the consensus estimate of $1.61. Total revenue surged 50% year over year to an all-time high of $11.5 billion, exceeding the roughly $11.34 billion analysts had projected. The dual growth in revenue and profit was primarily fueled by the data center segment. Thanks to robust demand for EPYC server CPUs and Instinct-series AI accelerators, that segment's revenue more than doubled year over year, reaching $6.7 billion. The company projects server CPU revenue to grow 80% year over year in the second half of 2026 and 70% in 2027. It also expects data center revenue overall to more than double in 2027, with AI GPU growth far exceeding 100%. The company also unveiled its next-generation AI chips, headlined by the Instinct MI450 series GPUs and the sixth-generation EPYC Venice CPUs. Built on these new chips, the company introduced the Helios system, an integrated platform that combines GPUs, CPUs, networking, and software, purpose-built for large model training and inference. This directly challenges Nvidia's dominance in AI. Alongside the new product launch, the company finalized two major partnerships. Microsoft will deploy the Helios system in Azure AI services starting in the second half of 2026. The company also deepened its collaboration with Anthropic, further expanding its push into the AI infrastructure market against Nvidia. Anthropic plans to deploy up to 2 gigawatts of Instinct MI450 GPUs within the Helios system starting in the first half of 2027, a deal with a long-term value potentially reaching tens of billions of dollars. The company has also committed to investing up to $5 billion in Anthropic, marking one of the largest strategic investments in its history. Demand for AI chips remains exceptionally strong. Su commented, "We are reaping the rewards of our earlier investments. Compute power is now a scarce resource... We are highly confident in the demand outlook."