Advanced Micro Devices revealed new AI chips, the Instinct MI400 series, set for 2026 release. These chips stack into a full server rack named Helios, letting thousands link as one massive system.
AMD CEO Lisa Su said at Thursday’s San Jose event:
"For the first time, we architected every part of the rack as a unified system."
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joined Su on stage and confirmed his company will use AMD’s MI400 chips.
"When you first started telling me about the specs, I was like, there’s no way, that just sounds totally crazy," Altman said. "It’s gonna be an amazing thing."
Helios aims to compete directly with Nvidia’s upcoming Vera Rubin racks, stitching huge GPU clusters into one space. AMD claims this setup will beat Nvidia on price and operating costs.
AMD’s MI355X chip, shipping in production since last month, is already in cloud provider datacenters. Oracle plans to offer clusters with 131,000 of these chips. Meta and Microsoft are also deploying AMD GPUs for AI workloads like inference and large language models.
AMD’s strategy:
"Across the board, there is a meaningful cost of acquisition delta that we then layer on our performance competitive advantage on top of, so significant double-digit percentage savings," said Andrew Dieckmann, AMD’s data center GPU GM.
AMD touts its chips can deliver 40% more AI tokens per dollar than Nvidia’s due to lower power draw and more high-speed memory.
The company expects the AI chip market to top $500 billion by 2028. Nvidia currently holds over 90% of this space. AMD’s CEO Lisa Su highlighted the importance of full-stack solutions with their acquisitions, like server maker ZT Systems.
"These AI systems are getting super complicated, and full-stack solutions are really critical," Su said.
AMD refuses to reveal exact pricing but plans an aggressive cost approach to take on Nvidia. The MI400 chips will integrate AMD CPUs and Pensando networking tech, using open-source UALink for rack connectivity versus Nvidia’s proprietary NVLink.
AMD’s AI chip business hit $5 billion in fiscal 2024, with analysts projecting 60% growth this year.
Watch AMD CEO Lisa Su talk export controls and growth:
