TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Time Magazine Tuesday named Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) as CEO of the Year.
Time credited much of AMD's success as a leading CPU chip maker and designer of GPUs to Su’s leadership. It pointed out that since becoming CEO 10 years ago, Su has taken the firm from having a stock price of US$3 (NT$97) to surpassing its rival Intel in 2022 and now trading at about US$140 per share.
Harvard Business School has included Su’s management of AMD as a case study in its curriculum this fall. Chris Miller, US semiconductor industry historian and author of “Chip War,” was cited by the magazine as saying, “It really is one of the great turnaround stories of modern American business history."
Time says those who know Su describe her as a “shrewd strategist” who invests in talented individuals while weeding out underperformers. Before delivering frank feedback to executives at a strategy meeting, the 55-year-old CEO told Time, “I don’t believe leaders are born. I believe leaders are trained."
Su often holds weekend meetings and discusses lengthy documents issued after midnight during morning calls. Su also visits the lab to personally test prototype chips.
Tech industry analyst Patrick Moorhead, a former AMD executive and tech-industry analyst, told Time that her “hard-charging style” may not suit everyone and creates challenges for those who fall short of expectations.
Jerry Sanders, AMD’s founder and first CEO, told Time, “We couldn’t have found a person better qualified for this job.” On whether Su can one day lead AMD to surpass rival Nvidia, Sanders said, "Not a question in my mind."
Born in Taiwan, Su emigrated to the US with her family at age 3. Growing up in New York, she discovered her passion for STEM early on, becoming fascinated with coding basic computer programs.
She attended a science-focused high school in the Bronx where she created a hurricane simulation in a box. In college, she majored in electrical engineering at MIT, eventually earning her Ph.D.
In 2012, Su joined AMD as senior vice president and general manager of global business units and became CEO in 2014. “I felt like I was in training for the opportunity to do something meaningful in the semiconductor industry. And AMD was my shot," Su told Time.
Taking over a debt-laden company that had laid off 25% of its workforce, Su faced significant challenges. AMD excelled at building powerful processors, and Su set an ambitious goal for her engineers to design a new CPU that was 40% faster than previous versions.
She also assembled a team to work on the even more ambitious project of developing chips for the world’s first exascale supercomputer capable of performing 1 quintillion operations per second. These decisions reflected an essential element of Su's leadership philosophy: “People are really motivated by ambitious goals," while the prior strategy of “let’s just do a little bit better here and there — that’s actually less motivational.”
Su’s long-term vision includes growth in the demand for AI semiconductors. She predicts that by 2028, the specialized AI chip market alone will be worth US$500 billion, surpassing the size of the overall semiconductor industry 10 years ago.
In addition, Su on Friday was included in the Financial Times' 25 most influential women of 2024 list. Su's brief profile in the unranked list was authored by former President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who lauded her as a “trailblazer” who has “shattered glass ceilings.”
