AMD Guides to $17 Billion in Q4, Set to Outsell Intel for First Time

AMD guided fourth-quarter revenue to approximately $17 billion, plus or minus 3%, a figure that would put it ahead of Intel for the first time in the companies' shared history. Intel, for its part, expects $15 billion to $16 billion for the same quarter, constrained by weak PC demand and manufacturing capacity limits. At the midpoints of both forecasts, AMD would lead its considerably larger rival by roughly $1.5 billion.

The guidance follows AMD's highest quarterly revenue ever. Third-quarter revenue reached $13.377 billion, up from $9.25 billion a year earlier and $11.54 billion in the previous quarter. Gross margin came in at 54%. Net income rose 95% year over year to $2.43 billion, and diluted earnings per share reached $1.46, compared with $0.75 in the same quarter last year.

What is driving the growth?

The Data Center unit did nearly all of the lifting. Segment revenue hit a record $8.55 billion, up 97% from $4.34 billion a year earlier and up 27% sequentially. Operating income surged 168% to $2.88 billion, with operating margin expanding from 25% to 34%. Data center now accounts for 64% of AMD's total revenue.

AMD credited demand for its latest Epyc server processors and the launch of its Instinct MI455X AI accelerators, which power its Helios rack-scale systems. The company named Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure as customers already running workloads on their first Helios installations.

The company expects Data Center revenue to climb from $8.55 billion in Q3 to approximately $12.8 billion in Q4, driven by the ramp of MI455X accelerators and Helios racks. Those are guidance figures, not booked results.

"We now expect server revenue to double year over year in 2027 and data center AI revenue to grow even faster than we projected ninety days ago," Lisa Su, AMD's chief executive and chairman, told analysts on the earnings call. "As a result, we expect data center to be more than eighty percent of our total revenue in 2027 and to drive the majority of our revenue and earnings growth."

That trajectory would push the data center share of company sales above 80% in 2027, up from 64% this quarter and 47% in Q3 2025. AMD also projects that server CPU revenue will double in 2027, while data center AI accelerator and rack revenue will more than double.

Where is the business shrinking?

Not everywhere. The Client and Gaming segment generated $3.722 billion, down 8% year over year and 3% sequentially. Client CPU sales totaled $2.95 billion, down from $3.06 billion in the prior quarter but up from $2.75 billion a year ago.

Gaming fared worse. Revenue from discrete Radeon GPUs and game console system-on-chips dropped to $773 million from $1.298 billion a year earlier, as Microsoft and Sony bought fewer console SoCs and Radeon sales stayed weak. Segment operating income fell 34% to $573 million, with operating margin down to 15%.

"In 2027, we are planning for PC market unit shipments to decline by a double-digit percentage," Su said. "In this environment, we expect to outperform the market as we deliver our rising roadmap and grow our commercial footprint."

AMD projects the Client and Gaming business to contract by more than 20% sequentially in Q4 2026 as higher memory prices erode PC demand. The company did not offer a specific 2027 revenue forecast for the segment, though it plans to outperform the market by focusing on enterprise, premium consumer, and desktop processors. The PC market, in short, is becoming a rounding error in AMD's story.

What about the Embedded unit?

The Embedded business grew 29% year over year to $1.11 billion, with operating income up 60% to $453 million. AMD attributed the gains to stronger demand from aerospace and defense, automotive, communications, and industrial customers.

The unit should grow by double digits sequentially in Q4 2026, and AMD expects double-digit annual growth for several years after that. "Data center build-outs are also driving higher demand for our embedded CPUs and adaptive SoCs in control plane and optical networking applications," Su said. "We remain on track to close more than eighteen billion of design wins in 2026, our third consecutive record year."

Why the Intel milestone matters

The Q4 outlook is the historical headline. AMD's guidance implies 66% year-over-year growth and 27% sequential growth at the midpoint. If achieved, the company would formally pass Intel in quarterly sales for the first time.

The gap reflects two diverging strategies. AMD is expanding fast in data center CPUs and AI accelerators, where hyperscaler demand shows no sign of cooling. Intel still depends heavily on PC and enterprise server processors, segments squeezed by high memory prices and component shortages. A reversal decades in the making may now be one quarter from confirmation, pending both companies' actual results.