Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) -) has been rising in popularity among investors, thanks in part to its president and chief executive officer, Lisa Su. Since taking over the job in 2014, Su has expanded AMD from a customized chip designer to a company with diversified interests in cloud computing and artificial intelligence. As AMD’s stock price has risen significantly during her tenure as CEO, so has her wealth. How did Su build her net worth, and is she a billionaire?
Who is Lisa Su? What is her background?
Lisa T. Su was born in Taiwan in 1969, and she immigrated with her family to New York City when she was three years old. She studied electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she received her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees.
Related: Jensen Huang’s net worth: How the Nvidia founder's AI stakes made him a billionaire
After her Ph.D., she worked for Texas Instruments on semiconductors in 1994 for a year and then left for research and development at International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) -). There she led the initiative to replace aluminum wiring with copper, resulting in better conductivity and performance in the company’s chips.
She took on various engineering and leadership roles at IBM and stayed until 2007. That's when she was tapped as chief technology officer to lead R&D for Freelance Semiconductor, which specialized in making chips for the automotive sector.
When did Lisa Su join Advanced Micro Devices?
In January 2012, Su joined AMD as senior vice president and general manager for the company’s global business units. This put her in charge of implementing many of its products and solutions from start to finish.
What is Lisa Su’s net worth?
Su has been awarded stock and option awards since she became CEO, and she has sold some shares periodically. As is often the case with tech executives, her stock compensation is many times more than her base salary.
Su’s wealth primarily comes from her stock holdings, and she held 4.1 million common shares in AMD as of Nov. 29, 2023, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Based on AMD’s stock price in early December, that put the value of her common stock holdings at $502 million. So, based on those shareholdings alone, she has a net worth of at least $502 million. Forbes, in a May 2023 article, put Su’s estimated net worth at around $740 million.
A real-time capture of Su’s wealth based only on her stake in AMD can be found here.
What is Advanced Micro Devices?
AMD was co-founded by Jerry Sanders, an engineer, in Santa Clara, Calif. in 1969, and became a publicly traded company in 1972.
The company’s early focus was on the manufacturing of the logic chip, which was the predecessor to the microprocessor. It eventually moved on to producing semiconductors for use in personal computers, just as the PC industry and home computing started to pick up in the 1980s and 1990s.
In 2022, AMD reported a profit of $1.3 billion on revenue of $23.6 billion.
How did Lisa Su save Advanced Micro Devices?
Su led the initiative for AMD to diversify its product and customer portfolio, including providing the chips used in Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation gaming consoles. At the time she joined in 2012, AMD was facing strong competition from other chipmakers, namely Intel Corp. (INTC) -). It was also facing a cash crunch that put it at risk of not being able to repay debt.
After she became president and CEO in October 2014, Su undertook initiatives to shed underperforming operations and focus on expanding into other lines of business. For example, she eliminated the foundries that produced the wafers for semiconductors and focused on chip design.
Over the years, she moved AMD into cloud computing and focused on expanding the production of graphics processing units (GPUs), in direct competition with Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) -), as demand for processing power to operate programs on artificial intelligence (AI) picked up.
What is Lisa Su’s salary?
In 2022, Su was paid a salary of $1.148 million. Stock and option awards helped to push up her total compensation to $30.2 million, according to a filing with the SEC.
Her pay is an increase from her first year as CEO in 2015, when she was paid $850,000. A $300,000 bonus and stock and option awards brought her total compensation that year to $6.5 million.
How has Advanced Micro Devices stock performed under Lisa Su?
When Su took over as CEO in October 2014, AMD was trading at around $2.70 per share. The stock traded at around $121 in early December 2023, representing an almost 45-fold increase. That sets its market capitalization at more than $1 trillion.
By comparison, in the same timeframe, the S&P 500 Index rose by only 2.5 times.
A $10,000 investment in AMD shares when Su took charge as CEO would translate to a $450,000 investment, as of December 2023.
How does Lisa Su make her money?
Su makes her money from the shares — vested and restricted stock units — awarded to her by AMD’s board of directors as part of an incentive-pay package each year. She sells some shares, which would have risen in value with the stock’s appreciation during her time as CEO, from time to time, and those sales are reported to the SEC.
Is Lisa Su a billionaire?
Su’s net worth was reported by Forbes to be around $740 million in May of 2023, and as of December of that year, her AMD stock holdings alone are worth about $502 million. She’s not yet a billionaire, but she’s well on her way.
Are Lisa Su and Jensen Huang related?
Su has said that she and Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, are distant relatives. A Taiwanese newspaper, “China Daily News,” indicated that Su’s mother, also born in Taiwan, and Huang are first cousins. AMD competes with Nvidia in making GPUs that have become important in the development and use of AI.
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