AMD’s Lisa Su on AI Chips & Shaun White’s Snow League 11/12/25

0:00Bring in show music please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. Lisa Su, CEO of chipmaker AMD, on the promise of artificial intelligence for her$380 billion company. The signals in the market right now say that we're still at the very beginning of the technology, but you're starting to see significant productivity. And for how we live, where we work, what we buy, the chips we need to power AI. I don't think it's a big gamble. I think it's the right gamble. And the flying tomato. Olympic gold medalist Sean White on the new opportunity in snowboarding. Where's the next Sean White?

0:44I'm like, they're there already. We're just not telling their story. From the half pipe to big business. It's been deemed action sports for the longest time, but it is sports. Plus, the rest of today's news that got us squawking, like the Trump administration reportedly weighing curbs on powerful proxy firms and index fund managers. Most people do not have the ability, time, resources, energy or effort to look through those votes. Got us really squawking. I'm buying American business. It is Wednesday, November 12th, 2025. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand Becky by in three, two, one. Cue it, please.

1:27Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We're live from the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Good morning. King's all here. Meantime, the government and airlines warning that disruptions have cropped up during the shutdown could end up continuing even after things reopened in D.C. The FAA now instituting flight cuts in order to keep things safe, as you know, at U.S. airports. During a press conference at Chicago's O 'Hare Airport, Board Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy saying that easing those restrictions will depend on air traffic controllers coming back to work.

2:03And he warned of further chaos if the government doesn't reopen. Big disruption thus far, massively more disruption as we come into the weekend if the government doesn't open. It is going to radically slow down. So the House has to do its work. And FlightAware is saying that about 1 ,200 flights have been canceled so far. That's just today. Yesterday, there were about 1900 cancellations. Airlines are supposed to be cutting about six percent of their schedules. Reports say finance industry executives have been invited to dinner with President Trump at the White House tonight. J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Nasdaq CEO Adina Friedman are said to have been invited.

2:47And among the other potential guests reported by Bloomberg in this case, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick. The Trump administration reportedly now looking at steps you could take to reduce the influence of proxy advisory firms like ISS and Glass-Lewis and index fund managers, including Vanguard and BlackRock. The Wall Street Journal reporting that one option could be a broad ban on shareholder recommendations. Another could target recommendations on companies that have hired the proxy firms to do consulting work. That's a conflict that we've talked about on this broadcast that other CEOs have talked about as well.

3:28Additionally, the report says the Trump administration is looking at forcing index fund managers to vote on proposals in the way their clients vote. I think that's a little more problematic. My own opinion there. Proxy firms have faced heavy criticism from corporate leaders, including Elon Musk, who called them terrorists. Jamie Dimon has made some comments over the years just about the influence and some of the conflicts, one of them being this idea that, you know, if you're playing on both sides. The idea, though, I don't know where you guys land on this. To me, the idea of either preventing them from making recommendations, I mean, there is a First Amendment.

4:05You should be able to do that. I have no problem with that. I think getting rid of some of the conflict part of this is important. But also the idea of taking away the vote from a BlackRock or a Vanguard or somebody else and just saying it's up to the individuals who are trading or own the shares. So do I. So it's interesting that you say that. The default, what happens then, I think, could be wrong. They just go with the company? Most people, unfortunately, don't vote at all. And so what effectively you're doing by default is giving, you're talking about who's got the power. You're giving more.

4:43This is a tradeoff. Who do you want to have the power? Do you want the management to have the power? Or do you want ostensibly, ostensibly Vanguard and these other funds should be representing the interests of the shareholders? That is at least ostensibly what they should be doing, which is different to some degree than what the managers necessarily are doing. And it's not always aligned. I just don't like that. But I don't like giving them my power. Well, no, no. But just to be clear, Vanguard, BlackRock, all of these funds, if you want to vote yourself, you have every right to vote yourself.

5:16You can go on and vote now. But you just said most people don't. Almost everybody's giving you the right. It's not that they're taking your vote from you. But most people don't. It's just that most people are not voting. I just don't want them speaking on my behalf. No, and it goes back. Well, then that's it. If you're saying that you don't want anyone to speak on your behalf and you don't want to vote. No, but I may want to vote myself. Then what you're saying is you want the management. But I don't want them to, if I choose not to vote, that doesn't mean I'm giving you my vote. Right. And the late, great Charlie Munger even said, who made Larry Fink king?

5:44And there was a time when he, at WEF or somewhere, he said, we need to force behavior about, this happened to be about climate change and whatever you believe about climate change. Okay. But he was voting for activists that were forcing fossil fuel companies to do stuff based on Larry Fink's ideas. And his own personal woke ideas about Clinton, which he's totally backed off of. I'm hearing you. My question to you, though. I think that was just egregious and ridiculous. Okay. My question to you is a different one, though. If you're saying that you don't want to vote. No, I'm not saying I don't want to vote.

6:21There are times when I do vote. By the way, I have money in all of these places, too. There are times when I do vote, but if I choose not to vote, it doesn't mean that I'm giving you my vote. But I think then there's a question, which is I would think that you should be able to give the vote to the firm or not. And that should be an option. But it shouldn't be an opt out. It should be an opt in if I choose to give you my vote. And I if I and that's a question to do that. And the question is whether you think to give that vote to any. I appreciate that. The question is whether you think that most Americans whose 401k plan is effectively being managed by these funds.

6:53And the reason you're by the way, the reason you're having a target dated fund, for example, which I would never invest in. Okay. But there's a lot of people that have target dated funds or have S &P funds in their 401k plans or other things that are being managed. And the reason you're using them is these are the firms that you're hiring to do this. No, these are the firms my company are hiring. So these are my choices in my 401k. Well, and that's the question. And the question is whether they give you, if you get the choice, you can use the choice. And if you don't use the choice, whether the firm should be able to have that choice.

7:23But it should be an opt-in, not an opt-out. And if you decide, I like this company, I want to own it, I like what management's doing, I'm long their stock, what's the problem with defaulting to where the company has more influence than some outside proxy firm that might have all these ridiculous notions in their head? I immediately think about CEO compensation. Let's get rid of the conflict piece. Okay. Let's start with like... Are you talking about CEO compensation, that you don't want that rubber stamped? Are the corporations always doing something bad, trying to put something over? No, but the question is, who is arguably going to have more of your interests?

7:59The management? This is the tradeoff. Is management going to have your interests? If they're aligned with the shares going up like you are, then they will have it. Well, hopefully, but the question is, who's looking out for you? Is it going to be the management, or would you like to have somebody else do that? You put your money into that stock for a reason, because you like the management, you like what they're doing. Sure, but most of the people are not putting their money in each individual stock. I just wanted to lay one issue out so everyone's on the same page. The reason why people don't vote and the reason why this is an issue is most people have money in their S &P 500 fund.

8:35So there's 500 companies in that fund. Each of those companies has a proxy vote every year that could have a dozen or 20 different elections that have to be made. most people do not have the ability, time, resources, energy, or effort to look through those votes. And so the question is, if you're saying that you just blindly say whatever management says is great, go with God. That's one view. But it's not whatever the proxy owners say. I would defer to them before your friends in the proxy. I'm not talking about the proxy guys. I'm just saying that ostensibly what you're trying to do is the reason people hire people to manage their money, to do things for them, is because they are spending money and resources to try to look at each individual issue arguably for you.

9:27Now, again, you take the conflict piece out. Not index funds. But the reason I invest in the S &P 500 is because I don't want to pay somebody a lot of money to manage that stuff. And I certainly don't want to. Look, there may be times when I would agree with the proxy firms on some of these things. There would be times I would agree with management. But I would like if I'm not blindly giving them. But I'm not taking your vote away. No, but I'm not blindly giving it to them either. If I opt into that, fine. But the default should not be that they get my vote if I don't take it. And so how would you like that to work?

9:59Because what's going to happen under your scenario is people will have a 401k plan. when they're first enrolled in the plan 25 years ago, if you're starting somewhere, they're going to have a checkbox that's going to say, would you like me to do it or would you not like me to do it? Some people will just check it blindly. Some people won't check it blindly. And that's the thing with opt-in. You're going to get a much smaller percentage of people who are doing that, and I think that's okay. And you think that's okay? Yeah, I do. Because even if they never vote again and never touch it. But again, it's like, who do you put your blind trust in?

10:31Do you put your blind faith and trust in the head of the proxy? Your default. Paul, your default is, it seems to be that the corporation's trying to put something over on you and you need some. But I agree with the conflict of interest piece. If you had a contract of any sort, I assume you would have a lawyer look at it for you. Maybe you wouldn't. But the reason you'd have the lawyer look at it for you is because ostensibly they work for you. Right. And ostensibly they are trying to look out for your best interest because the people that you're buying the product from hopefully do. by the way.

11:00I think when I buy a pair of sneakers, I hope that they have my interest at live. That's how you see an index fund manager in that light. I don't at all. Put the stocks in there. It's what makes the market. Put the stocks in there. Make the fees low, and I'll take my chances. I'll handle it. Do not be voting your own ridiculous notions with my stuff. You're not king. There was a no kings day. Don't forget that. And Joe marched. Yeah, but you recognize who you're making the king then? The CEO? Bingo. And the board. Bingo. That's why I'm buying their stock. Okay. Okay. But you're not buying their stock.

11:39Okay, I'm buying American business. Cheese will be next. Next on Squawk Pod, Lisa Su, CEO of Chipmaker AMD, had a big message for Wall Street and consumers. AI is for everyone. Like everyone should get a piece of AI. The full conversation with Lisa Su is right after this break.

12:08Welcome back to Squawk Pod. You're watching Squawk on CNBC. I'm Andra Sorkin along with Joe Kernan and Becky Quick on a Wednesday morning hump day. The end of the shutdown could be close. The House expected to vote on the continuing resolution later today to reopen the government. you're looking at a beautiful live shot right now of the capital as the sun comes up. Let's hope it comes up and maybe a deal gets made against that backdrop. It's almost like it comes up every day, no matter what. Thank God. Checking the sun will come up. The sun also rises. And the sun will come up tomorrow. Tomorrow.

12:45Sun also rises. Bet your bottom dollar. We'll fight it. Bet tomorrow.

12:52AMD hosting an analyst day yesterday. It's the first time in three years. The chipmaker says that revenue growth will expand 35 percent a year over the next three to five years. And the company's AI data center is expected to grow at 80 percent a year and potentially hit tens of billions of dollars in sales by 2027. Joining us right now is the AMD CEO, Lisa Su. A note on this. This AMD stock up phenomenally. You can see since she took over 7 ,589 percent. Lisa, I think when you took over, this was a$2 billion market cap. I think today it's above$386 billion. Congratulations. Thank you. Who's counting?

13:36Well, it's great to be here with you guys this morning. Thanks for having me. It's great to see you, too. Last week, you had earnings that came out that beat all expectations, and yet the stock actually declined. I think people were waiting to see what you said at the investor day. They liked what they heard, especially when it came to the revenue, the annualized growth that you're expecting, 35%. I think most people were looking for closer to 30%. Predictions are hard, though, especially about the future. And I guess the big question is, what makes you so confident? Well, you know, first of all, it was a great day yesterday.

14:05It's always nice to sometimes take a step back from just what's happening on a quarterly basis to really talk about long-term strategy. And it has been, as you said, it's been three years since we've hosted an analyst day. But what we thought is there's been so much that's changed in the market just over the last 12, 18, 24 months that we kind of needed to kind of just take a step back and talk about the company as a whole. And frankly, I mean, we're in just an amazing cycle for technology and specifically around AI. So, you know, back to the major points. I mean, the market is accelerating at a pace that we just did not understand until over the last few years.

14:46I think we started a couple of years ago. We thought the AI accelerator term might be$300 billion. And that sounded like a really big number. And then each year we took it up. And now when we take a step back, we see this massive opportunity, really over a trillion dollar overall market as we get through 2030. And it's a place where everybody needs technology. Think about it as you can think about computing as equating to intelligence. And if you can get more intelligence, why wouldn't you want more computing? And that's kind of the market that we're in. And so from that standpoint, we're really excited about what we have.

15:26It's a product portfolio. It's a set of partnerships. But it's also a vision for where computing is going in the future. What makes you so sure of that demand? What do you see that makes you think not only that this demand is going to be big, but that it's real and that it's not going to disappear? Well, Becky, we spend a lot of time in the ecosystem. And being in this industry for as long as I've been in this industry over 30 years, I think you see a lot of cycles and you see a lot of technologies take off. The key is what people are saying as they're actually utilizing the technology. So we work with all of the largest hyperscalers in the world, all of the largest enterprises.

16:04And if you looked at sort of the AI trajectory over the last couple of years, I think people started with tremendous excitement. ChatGPT came on board. Everyone was like, wow, this is pretty good. And then enterprises started using it. And frankly, the early enterprise usage was a little bit slow. I mean, people were kind of just trying to figure out what to do. But if I tell you what we've seen in the last 12 months, we've seen every one of our largest customers say, we can see the inflection point now, Lisa. Like we can see, you know, demand is accelerating because people are now starting to get real productivity out of the AI use cases.

16:43And, you know, we have all of the largest hyperscalers in the world saying they're investing more in CapEx because they can see the return on the other side of it. So it is something that we always are looking for the signals in the market. But the signals in the market right now say that we're still at the very beginning of the technology, but you're starting to see significant productivity improvements. Do you really think that they can see the returns on the other side? Or do you think there's a little bit of a big gamble going on, which is to say that there's a bunch of them will tell you quite openly, look, I'd much prefer to be ahead than behind, meaning ahead than behind.

17:21I'm worried that if I don't invest enough now, I won't have enough capacity later, but I can't necessarily fully math out how it's going to work out on the other end either. I don't think it's a big gamble. I think it's the right gamble. And the way I would say it is we can also definitely see that more computing and more investments equate to a faster pace of innovation. I think that's definitely there. I think you can also see all of the pointers to more productivity and more capability. Now, exactly timing of ROI, if you're talking about is it 12 months or 24 months, I think that's where it becomes a little fuzzier.

18:02But I would say that, look, our largest customers are extremely disciplined companies. And they have the balance sheets to invest. I'll give you an example. The one that everybody talks about is OpenAI. Yeah. So OpenAI in 2028 is expecting to lose$74 billion. By the way, they have$13 billion in revenue right now. I believe that's the number. They believe that somehow between 2028 and 2030, that they will all of a sudden become a profitable business. So they have to make a swing from a$74 billion loss. Something magical has to happen in the course of 24 months. So the question I would ask you is somebody who, by the way, has to think of them to some degree as a customer slash creditor of sorts.

18:50How do you think about that math? Yeah. So I would take a step back and say when you look at the entirety of what the AI sort of technology companies are, you have the largest hyperscalers. You have, I call it, the AI native leaders like OpenAI, Anthropic, others. and what the underlying foundation is the same. They all need computing. Now, relative to your comment about OpenAI, I think OpenAI is a phenomenal company. Oh, I do too. I use it every second. I love the business. I love what they're trying to do. I'm trying to understand the math. Let's start with the vision and then we'll come to the math.

19:32When you look at the math, the vision will say you need more computing. that today computing is a limiting factor in how much people can adopt AI. And you can see that in a number of different places. And so, yes, you have to invest ahead of the curve so that you can get the entire user base on there. But if you just take a look at the growth in users, not just at OpenAI, but across the entire AI ecosystem, we're seeing that growth. And we're seeing that growth because there is true productivity coming at the other end of it. And from that standpoint, I think we are all, Like I said, we're disciplined business people, but we see an incredible opportunity in front of us.

20:13And absolutely, if one has the capability to address that with a fantastic balance sheet, you would absolutely do that. Let's talk about your plans for AI data centers. You are scaling pretty rapidly. you see the growth there in terms of revenue being greater than 80 % over the next several years and potentially getting to have more than a 10 % market share in that business over the next few years. To do that, you're going to have to go through NVIDIA because by some estimates, they have more than 90 % of the market share right now. What's your plan for doing that? Well, I would say, once again, this is an amazing market with tremendous growth.

20:54And whenever you have a market that is, let's call it early in the cycle and also on a steep growth curve, it really favors innovation and it favors partnership. From our standpoint, technology roadmap, we're super excited about the new products that we're bringing out. We have our MI350 series currently in production. We have a big step up with new rack scale architectures coming next year. What we also have is a really strong set of partnerships. OpenAI, we have partnerships with Oracle, Meta, all of the large hyperscalers. And the key in this type of market, Becky, is that everybody wants to have sort of multiple solutions.

21:35And frankly, there's no one solution that fits all. You can see with different workloads, you're going to want to have the best technology for each one. And we do believe we will have a significant significant piece of this market. I think between large hyperscalers, enterprises, as well as sovereign nation states that are out there building large data center installations, I think we are an excellent option. We've talked about some of the key partnerships to do that. Mind-boggling, what I've seen with AMData. We spoke just briefly about Jerry, one of the co-founders, Jerry Sanders, who I knew for a while.

22:12He started this in 1969, I think, at where he was at Fairchild. Every employee got stock options when he started. And you told me I haven't kept up. He's still alive. He might be watching. He's 89 years old, I think. The reason I bring this up, Lisa, I watched AMD challenge Intel for years and years. And I had the, I have to rethink everything because I thought of it as an also-ran back then. And it It always seemed to be copying or cloning a lot of things that Intel did. The chart doesn't even work. And this is only, what is that? That's only 10 years for Intel versus AMD. Something happened somewhere.

22:55Can you tell me where Intel missed something or AMD capitalized? I mean, obviously, but it was a, I don't know, GP. Did things change in the business? What caused Intel to lose its preeminence? Well, first of all, Joe, as I said, we love Jerry. I hope Jerry's watching. He absolutely founded a fantastic company, and I'm honored to be CEO. Look, I've been CEO for 11 years, a little bit over 11 years. And as I said, what you find in technology is when you're at inflection points in technology, you have to make the right strategic bets. You have to decide, hey, I know where it's going to go, and I'm going to invest in those places.

23:38And that's what we've done. I think we had a vision that high-performance computing was going to be the most important thing, and that's what we were going to invest in. And with that, we systematically gained confidence. Becky, back to your earlier question, when I started, I think we had 1 % of the CPU market, and today we're probably about 40%, and I think we have a path to be over 50%, or number one in the market. And that came from just a true belief of where the technology is going and how do we partner with the largest companies out there. I am not anybody to question your ability to do it, but it is really hard, I'm told, to come up with this rack scale infrastructure.

24:23And obviously you care about putting your customers first. You care about building trust with them. You're not going to do anything that would put that at risk. But even NVIDIA stumbled when they brought out the Blackwell chips, chips, which is their third iteration of that architecture. So what are you doing? How can you be so confident? What are you doing to make sure that this pulls off without a hitch? Well, Becky, I can say that our track record is we've built an execution machine, and we are very confident in our ability to bring out new products. One of the things that, you know, when you look at the past five years, we've invested over$100 billion, both organically and inorganically in the company.