AMD is struggling against Nvidia. It could soon face a resurgent Intel as well.

MW AMD is struggling against Nvidia. It could soon face a resurgent Intel as well.

By Emily Bary

A Jefferies analyst downgraded AMD's stock, warning of sustained pressure from Nvidia and the prospect of a healthier Intel

The prospect of a stronger Intel Corp. could make it difficult for Advanced Micro Devices Inc. shares to find positive momentum, according to a Jefferies analyst.

AMD $(AMD)$ has already been struggling to compete with Nvidia Corp. $(NVDA)$ in the market for artificial-intelligence accelerators, and Jefferies's Blayne Curtis worries about that trend as well. But now Intel $(INTC)$ could see a "brighter future" under its new chief executive, and that's another factor driving Curtis's more measured view of AMD's stock.

He cut his rating on AMD shares to hold from buy on Thursday. The stock was down more than 3% in midday action, bringing its 12-month decline to 40%.

As Intel has struggled in recent years, AMD has been able to win share in the market for personal-computer chips at its competitors' expense. But Intel's new management could be "a catalyst for them to become more competitive," Curtis wrote, and it's worth asking whether AMD's market-share gains can continue.

"We have to see more on this front, but we do have a lot of respect for the incoming CEO (Lip-Bu Tan) and would look for Intel to be more flexible on process choices/fab strategy to mitigate share losses as soon as possible," he added, referring to fabrication plants. "This is still a long road ahead but we do think that Intel had already made some progress and will have fairly competitive chips starting in 2026."

Then there's industry titan Nvidia, which has dominated the market for AI graphics processing units. Curtis noted that AMD has seen "limited traction in AI" thus far, and Nvidia is stepping up its game even further with newly announced GPUs and its Dynamo inferencing software.

Nvidia "is driving innovation across many areas" and it "will be tough for even the largest of companies to keep pace," Curtis wrote. He left Nvidia's GTC event last week with the impression that Nvidia is much further ahead of AMD on rack-scale architecture.

AMD also faces stiff competition from application-specific integrated circuits, like those made by Marvell Technology Inc. $(MRVL)$ and Broadcom Inc. $(AVGO)$ in partnership with large technology companies. For instance, Alphabet Inc. $(GOOG)$ $(GOOGL)$ is working with Broadcom on one that Curtis expects will come out in July.

-Emily Bary

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March 27, 2025 12:45 ET (16:45 GMT)

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