Advanced Micro Devices is likely to overtake Intel in the central processing unit market, adding to the stock’s appeal compared to other semiconductor names, according to Raymond James. The investment firm upgraded the semiconductor name to strong buy from outperform. It also hiked its price target on shares to $641 from $565, implying 40% upside from Monday’s close. “AMD offers the strongest combination of direct earnings leverage, datacenter positioning and market-share gains,” analyst Simon Leopold said Tuesday in a note to clients. “AMD’s growth should enable it to overtake Intel during 2027.” AMD is a designer and manufacturer of CPUs, hardware that is used to power computers, servers and artificial intelligence-linked data centers. AMD YTD mountain AMD year to date Its business has gained steam of late due to widening AI and computer adoption, bringing the company closer to overtaking Intel on market share in at least one area of the CPU market. In the second quarter, AMD’s share of the x86 processors CPU market crossed 30%, gaining ground against Intel, which has control of 69.7% of the market, PCMag reported , citing data from Mercury Research. Raymond James predicts the CPU market will hit roughly $201 billion in 2030. That figure includes $33.5 billion of conventional datacenter CPUs, $83 billion of AI head-end CPUs and $85 billion of agentic CPUs. The potential proliferation of agentic AI, or autonomous AI agents, should serve as the “principal new growth engine for the CPU market,” Leopold added. Raymond James’ call falls in line with consensus on Wall Street. Of the 54 analysts covering AMD, 45 have a buy or strong buy rating on the stock, LSEG data shows. Shares are up 113% in 2026, outperforming the overall market. However, they’ve edged down about 2% over the past three months. The stock gained more than 2% following the upgrade.
