Chasing Nvidia, AMD signs chips-for-stock deal with Meta

In recent months, Advanced Micro Devices has turned to a novel strategy in its race catch up to Nvidia in the lucrative world of selling artificial intelligence chips.

- TRIPP MICKLE ADAM SATARIANO

The logos of AMD and Meta. Lisa Su, AMD's chief executive, has been trying to break into a market for AI chips that has been dominated by Nvidia.

(REUTERS)

The company has begun offering prized customers a sizable stake of its business if they bought its semiconductors.AMD said on Tuesday that Meta would buy billions of dollars’ worth of its chips to develop AI technologies and power new data centres. As part of the deal, the social media giant can also take a financial stake of up to 10% in the chip developer, the two companies said.

In October, AMD struck a similar deal with OpenAI to provide chips in exchange for a financial stake.

The Meta-AMD agreement is the latest example of the kind of circular deals that have become a common feature of the AI boom. In recent years, Nvidia has invested billions of dollars in a number of customers, including the ChatGPT parent OpenAI, Elon Musk’s xAI and CoreWeave, a data centre developer, that turn around and spend that money on the company’s chips.