AMD Soars as AI Chip Sales Prediction Bodes Well for Rivalry with Nvidia

A smartphone with a displayed AMD logo is placed on a computer motherboard in this illustration taken March 6, 2023. (Reuters)
A smartphone with a displayed AMD logo is placed on a computer motherboard in this illustration taken March 6, 2023. (Reuters)
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AMD Soars as AI Chip Sales Prediction Bodes Well for Rivalry with Nvidia

A smartphone with a displayed AMD logo is placed on a computer motherboard in this illustration taken March 6, 2023. (Reuters)
A smartphone with a displayed AMD logo is placed on a computer motherboard in this illustration taken March 6, 2023. (Reuters)

Shares of Advanced Micro Devices jumped 8% on Wednesday, after an upbeat AI chip sales forecast signaled the company was making progress in its bid to catch up with market leader Nvidia.

The optimism over AI chip sales helped ease worries about a disappointing fourth-quarter forecast and put it on course for market value gains of nearly $13 billion, based on the $106.41 share price.

CEO Lisa Su on Tuesday provided a 2024 sales forecast for the first time for the MI300 chips, designed to compete against the advanced H100 chips sold by Nvidia.

She projected annual sales of more than $2 billion, and raised the chip's current-quarter revenue expectations by $100 million.

That would make the MI300 the fastest product to ramp to $1 billion in sales in AMD's history.

"Hitting this milestone is likely a key first step towards proving AMD is the clear second source to Nvidia in the AI accelerator market," said analysts at TD Cowen.

The CEO also said the MI300 chips had won commitments from "multiple, large hyperscale customers", a term that refers to large tech and cloud computing companies.

AMD's shares have gained 61% this year through last close, but those gains pale in comparison to Nvidia's 184% rally.

Still, the conservative forecast and weakness in several of AMD's markets led at least 18 analysts to cut their price targets on the stock, pushing down the median view to $130, per LSEG data.

"Forecasts were below our prior estimates ... and it's quite possible that such estimates could be conservative," Morningstar analyst Brian Colello said.

While the PC market has been seeing signs of recovery, a weak gaming market and decline in demand for programmable chips used by industries such as wireless communications, healthcare and automotive have been a drag.



Huawei's AI Lab Denies that One of its Pangu Models Copied Alibaba's Qwen

FILE PHOTO: Huawei logo is seen during Munich Auto Show, IAA Mobility 2021 in Munich, Germany, September 8, 2021. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Huawei logo is seen during Munich Auto Show, IAA Mobility 2021 in Munich, Germany, September 8, 2021. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/File Photo
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Huawei's AI Lab Denies that One of its Pangu Models Copied Alibaba's Qwen

FILE PHOTO: Huawei logo is seen during Munich Auto Show, IAA Mobility 2021 in Munich, Germany, September 8, 2021. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Huawei logo is seen during Munich Auto Show, IAA Mobility 2021 in Munich, Germany, September 8, 2021. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/File Photo

Huawei's artificial intelligence research division has rejected claims that a version of its Pangu Pro large language model has copied elements from an Alibaba model, saying that it was independently developed and trained.

The division, called Noah Ark Lab, issued the statement on Saturday, a day after an entity called HonestAGI posted an English-language paper on code-sharing platform Github, saying Huawei's Pangu Pro Moe (Mixture of Experts) model showed "extraordinary correlation" with Alibaba's Qwen 2.5 14B.

This suggests that Huawei's model was derived through "upcycling" and was not trained from scratch, the paper said, prompting widespread discussion in AI circles online and in Chinese tech-focused media.

According to Reuters, the paper added that its findings indicated potential copyright violation, the fabrication of information in technical reports and false claims about Huawei's investment in training the model.

Noah Ark Lab said in its statement that the model was "not based on incremental training of other manufacturers' models" and that it had "made key innovations in architecture design and technical features." It is the first large-scale model built entirely on Huawei's Ascend chips, it added.

It also said that its development team had strictly adhered to open-source license requirements for any third-party code used, without elaborating which open-source models it took reference from.

Alibaba did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Reuters was unable to contact HonestAGI or learn who is behind the entity.

The release of Chinese startup DeepSeek's open-source model R1 in January this year shocked Silicon Valley with its low cost and sparked intense competition between China's tech giants to offer competitive products.

Qwen 2.5-14B was released in May 2024 and is one of Alibaba's small-sized Qwen 2.5 model family which can be deployed on PC and smartphones.

While Huawei entered the large language model arena early with its original Pangu release in 2021, it has since been perceived as lagging behind rivals. It open-sourced its Pangu Pro Moe models on Chinese developer platform GitCode in late June, seeking to boost the adoption of its AI tech by providing free access to developers.

While Qwen is more consumer-facing and has chatbot services like ChatGPT, Huawei's Pangu models tend to be more used in government as well as the finance and manufacturing sectors.