Cathie Wood's ARK Says AMD Chips 'Can Already Be More Performant Per Dollar' Than Nvidia
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) is positioning itself to challenge Nvidia Corp.‘s (NASDAQ:NVDA) long-standing dominance in the lucrative AI accelerator market.
According to a fresh analysis released by Cathie Wood‘s ARK Invest, internal research reveals that AMD chips “can already be more performant than Nvidia chips” per dollar on select workloads, highlighting a massive shift in data center cost efficiency.
The CPU Playbook Applied to GPUs
ARK Invest’s Director of Research, AI & Cloud, Frank Downing, highlighted that AMD is running the same playbook it previously deployed to successfully disrupt Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC). After holding nearly zero server market share in 2017, AMD’s server CPU revenue share skyrocketed to 46% by the first quarter of 2026 due to consistent, power-efficient chip delivery.
AMD is now utilizing this aggressive execution strategy against Nvidia by launching Helios, a comprehensive rack-scale solution arriving in the second half of this year. ARK remains highly optimistic about Helios, pointing to high-profile customer commitments from OpenAI, Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META), and Oracle Corp. (NYSE:ORCL).
Additionally, the emergence of agentic AI is acting as a major tailwind for AMD’s core chip business. As highly capable AI agents command significantly more traditional compute resources than early AI chatbots, CPUs are becoming increasingly critical to the evolving AI ecosystem.
Scaling in a Trillion-Dollar Market
This intense chip rivalry unfolds as global technology capital expenditure as a percent of GDP outpaces spending from the historic tech bubble era. The top four hyperscalers alone are expected to spend over $700 billion in 2026.
Looking ahead, ARK Invest forecasts that the total addressable market (TAM) for AI systems will triple by 2030, reaching a staggering $1.5 trillion in annual sales.
Although Nvidia maintains a firm grip on the market and competitors like Google’s parent Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL), and Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) actively pursue custom in-house hardware projects, ARK concludes that AMD is primed for growth.
Armed with strong chip architectures and a proven design team, AMD is expected to “capture a reasonable share of the future AI compute TAM” from its small current baseline.
How Has AMD Performed In 2026?
AMD shares were up 155.29% year-to-date, up 14.98% over the last month, and higher by 295% over the year. It closed 5.67% higher at $546.72 per share on Thursday, and was down 0.12% in overnight trading.
Benzinga’s Edge Stock Rankings indicate that AMD maintains a strong price trend in the short, medium, and long terms, with a good growth score.
Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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