MW AMD flirts with a $900 billion valuation after beefing up its memory technology
By Hannah Pedone
AMD's stock is surging, with the company now worth more than JPMorgan Chase
Shares of AMD were up sharply on Monday.
Memory is a severe bottleneck in the artificial-intelligence buildout, and traditional chip makers are looking for every edge they can get in a bid to optimize output and control costs.
Take Advanced Micro Devices $(AMD)$, which announced on Monday its acquisition of MEXT, a company that specializes in memory optimization solutions.
MEXT develops "AI-powered predictive memory technology," which has the potential to "reduce infrastructure costs, improve resource utilization, and help customers more effectively scale general-purpose and AI workloads," according to an AMD press release.
Even though the deal may only make AMD's memory architecture "a small amount more efficient," according to Seaport Research analyst Jay Goldberg, investors seem to be cheering the announcement. AMD shares are up 7.4% in afternoon trading and the company is due to see its market capitalization surpass that of JPMorgan Chase $(JPM)$ at the close.
AMD was also briefly worth $900 billion-plus on an intraday basis before surrendering some gains.
Read more: Missed the rally in optical stocks? Coherent and Lumentum just got more attractive, according to J.P. Morgan.
Benchmark analyst Cody Acree told MarketWatch that the deal is unlikely to make a material difference to AMD's near-term revenue, but that it expands the company's alternatives to its memory architecture solutions.
The deal is "just a nice technology tuck-in that adds to AMD's memory optimization capabilities," he said.
Seaport's Goldberg told MarketWatch that there is excitement around "anything around AI and memory" right now, and that is helping drive AMD's stock higher on Monday.
He thinks the acquisition is going to make AMD's memory a bit more efficient but emphasized that it doesn't mean AMD is "getting into the memory business."
To do that, "you'd need to own a fab," he said, referring to the fabrication facility where silicon wafers are made for chip makers.
Rather, the deal "just makes [AMD] a little more competitive" he said.
Goldberg said that companies like MEXT or Silicon Motion are developing optimization technologies to more efficiently store memory and cut down costs by "reorganizing how the memory is catalogued in the silicon."
"When we're dealing this on scale of like hundreds of billions of dollars of compute, ... being able to shave off like 1% or 2% because your memory is a little bit more efficient, that adds up."
That said, broader market dynamics were certainly playing into AMD's run on Monday as well, he noted. Riskier stocks were zooming higher as news of an Iran peace deal offered some relief to investors.
See also: AMD is seen as a CPU stock - but it's gaining ground here, too
-Hannah Pedone
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 15, 2026 14:28 ET (18:28 GMT)
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