AMD forecasts about $17 billion in Q4 revenue, enough to top Intel for the first time

AMD said late on Tuesday that it expects roughly $17 billion in fourth-quarter revenue, guidance that would put it ahead of Intel in quarterly sales for the first time in the company's history. According to Tom's Hardware, the figure would exceed Intel's own projections for the same period.

The outlook arrived alongside AMD's latest earnings report, in which the company posted record quarterly revenue. The result was carried by the two product lines sitting at the center of the AI infrastructure buildout: server processors and AI accelerators.

Data center and AI products carry the quarter

According to Tom's Hardware, demand for AMD's Epyc data center processors and its Instinct AI accelerators nearly doubled compared with the same period a year earlier. Growth in those data center products outweighed declines elsewhere in the portfolio, and AMD's profitability continued to improve as a result.

The client side of the business, the chips that go into PCs, held up better than the environment might suggest. Tom's Hardware reports that sales of AMD's client products declined only modestly even with memory prices high and other pressures mounting, conditions that have been raising the cost of building systems across the industry.

A first in the AMD–Intel rivalry

The headline number is the Q4 outlook. Guidance of about $17 billion would put AMD ahead of Intel for the first time in history, according to Tom's Hardware, reversing a revenue gap that has separated the two x86 rivals for as long as either has been selling processors.

Two caveats are worth keeping in mind. AMD's $17 billion is a forecast, and the quarter still has to deliver it. And the comparison rests on Intel's projections rather than final reported results. But if both companies land where they have guided, the milestone stands: AMD would post the larger quarter for the first time.

Why it matters

A passing of the lead between AMD and Intel has been a long time coming, and it is being driven almost entirely by the data center. AMD's growth is concentrated in exactly the products cloud providers and AI builders are buying, while Intel's traditional strength in client PCs counts for less in a market where the marginal dollar of silicon spending goes toward AI infrastructure.

For buyers, a stronger AMD means more competition in both server processors and AI accelerators. Instinct is one of the few merchant alternatives to Nvidia's dominant AI compute products, and Epyc competes directly with Intel's Xeon line in the server room. During an infrastructure buildout of this scale, having more than one credible supplier matters for pricing and for supply diversity.

The timing is the real story. That AMD could plausibly pass Intel in quarterly revenue at all is a measure of how far the industry's center of gravity has shifted toward whoever supplies the compute behind AI.