Lisa Su

Lisa Su (born 1969) has been president and chief executive officer of AMD since October 2014, and chair of its board since February 2022. According to the English Wikipedia she was born in Tainan, Taiwan, and moved to the United States with her family as a young child. She began as a semiconductor device researcher and became a chief executive by way of R&D management and the leadership of a business unit.

From MIT to Texas Instruments and IBM

All of her degrees are in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: a bachelor's, a master's and a doctorate. According to AMD's 2014 announcement, her first post was on the technical staff of Texas Instruments' Semiconductor Process and Device Center.

She then spent thirteen years at IBM in a range of engineering and business leadership roles, finally as vice-president of its Semiconductor Research and Development Center, responsible for the strategic direction of IBM's silicon technologies, its joint development alliances and its semiconductor R&D operations. By 2014 she had more than 40 technical publications; she was named one of MIT Technology Review's top 100 young innovators in 2002 and an IEEE Fellow in 2009.

Freescale

In 2007 she joined Freescale Semiconductor, a maker of embedded processors, as chief technology officer, leading its technology roadmap and research and development. In September 2008 she was promoted to senior vice-president and general manager of networking and multimedia, responsible for strategy, marketing, product management and engineering for the embedded communications and applications processor businesses. Here she moved from heading R&D to running a business unit with its own profit and loss.

From COO to CEO at AMD

She joined AMD in January 2012 as senior vice-president and general manager of its global business units. On 1 July 2014 she became chief operating officer, charged with integrating the business units, sales and global operations into a single organisation.

On 8 October 2014 the board announced both the departure of her predecessor, Rory Read, and her appointment as president, CEO and a director. She was 44. The company's SEC filing that day noted that Read would remain as an adviser until the end of the year and that her base salary at the time was US$650,000 a year. In the announcement she said she was honoured to lead AMD "during this important time of transformation." Her employment agreement took effect the same day.

Twelve years as CEO

The changes to the company during her tenure — the rebuilding of the product line on the Zen core, the concentration of manufacturing at TSMC, the acquisitions of Xilinx and ZT Systems, AI GPUs and export controls — are set out on the organization page. Events in that period involving AMD products are below.

Announcing the OpenAI partnership on 6 October 2025, she said as chair and CEO, "We are thrilled to partner with OpenAI to deliver AI compute at massive scale." Under the agreement AMD issued OpenAI a warrant for up to 160 million AMD shares, vesting with deployment milestones and share-price targets.

She became chair of the board in February 2022, combining the roles of president, CEO and chair. The board has a lead independent director (signature page of the fiscal 2025 10-K).

Honours and positions

AMD's 2026 proxy statement lists her as an IEEE Fellow and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; as a recipient of the Semiconductor Industry Association's Robert N. Noyce Award, the IEEE Robert N. Noyce Medal and the Global Semiconductor Alliance's Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award; and as TIME's CEO of the Year. She chairs the board of the Semiconductor Industry Association.

Assessment

Her career has passed through three distinct stages, each from the inside: semiconductor R&D, running an embedded-processor business, and leading a company in x86 processors and accelerators. From the base salary recorded when she became CEO to the OpenAI agreement of 2025, the path can be followed date by date in SEC filings.