AMD CEO Lisa Su says: AI has not slowed hiring at AMD, just that we are now hiring different people. We’re hiring people who are AI forward

AMD CEO Lisa Su recently spoke about the impact of AI on hiring. Speaking at the ongoing Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2026 in Las Vegas, US, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) CEO Lisa Su said that artificial intelligence has now slowed down the hiring process at the chipmaker.

She emphasised that AMD is actively expanding its workforce and is prioritising the candidates who are ‘AI forward’. “We’re actually not hiring fewer people,” Su told CNBC’s Jon Fortt. “Frankly, we’re growing very significantly as a company, so we actually are hiring lots of people, but we’re hiring different people. We’re hiring people who are AI forward.”AMD is known for designing graphic processing units (GPUs) that help in training AI workloads, placing the company at the center of the global AI race.

While, chipset maker Nvidia is dominating the AI chip market presently with more than 90% share, AMD is also aggressively positioning itself as s challenger and is incorporating AI into how it builds, designs, manufactures and tests chips.n Su stressed that candidates who ‘truly embrace’ AI are the ones being prioritised in hiring.

This practice reflects on the company’s shift forward embedding AI across its operations.

‘AI is augmenting our capabilities’

Su also pushed back against the concerns that the adoption of AI could lead to job cuts. Instead she believes that AI helps in increasing productivity. “AI is augmenting our capabilities. It’s not replacing people, it’s actually just augmenting our productivity in terms of the number of products we can bring up at any given time.”As of December 2024, AMD employed roughly 28,000 people worldwide, according to SEC filings.

Su said the company continues to grow “very significantly,” underscoring that AI is reshaping the type of talent AMD seeks rather than reducing overall headcount.

What Lisa Su said about the AI revolution

Last year, Su mentioned that she believes in AGI but not that AI will surpass human intelligence, and she isn’t concerned about doomsday scenarios. She sees technology’s value as dependent on the people who create and guide it, and thinks AI isn’t “great” yet.

For her, AI becomes great when it can solve complicated problems. She higlighted that current AI agents mostly handle mundane tasks.“I think there are two directions AI goes. One is pure productivity, you know, how do I remove some of, let’s call it, the menial work that people do, so that they can work on more interesting things? That’s one aspect of it, and we’re using that. But the other aspect of it is when AI can solve really hard problems.

It can take what would’ve taken us 10 years to figure out and do that in six months. I think about a world where it normally takes us three years to design a chip, and what does that look like if I could do that in six months?” she added.Comparing the AI revolution with the Internet revolution, Su noted: “The internet is not a bad comparison, but I think AI is much more than the internet. Because, if you think about it, the internet was a lot about moving traffic. AI is more about something foundational in terms of productivity. Sometimes people compare it to the Industrial Revolution, and that’s not a bad comparison, actually.”