Why AMD's megadeal with Meta shows Nvidia is still the best game in town

CNBC Finance

6 min read

Advanced Micro Devices inked another monster AI chip sale agreement in its efforts to pry market share from leader Nvidia . But a closer look at the structure of the deal reinforces that Nvidia is still the best game in town. On Tuesday, AMD and fellow Club name Meta Platforms unveiled what they're calling a strategic arrangement that could bring in north of $60 billion in sales to the chipmaker over a multiyear period. Meta is committing to buy 6 gigawatts worth of AMD's graphics processing units (GPUs) for its AI data centers â and each gigawatt is worth "double-digit billions" of revenue, AMD CEO Lisa Su said in a CNBC interview with Jim Cramer, shortly after the announcement. The deal also does something else: It gives Meta a path to owning almost 10% of AMD, if certain deployment milestones and stock-price thresholds are met, at practically no cost. AMD gave OpenAI a similar equity award as part of its chip sale agreement in October with the ChatGPT creator. As Nvidia investors consider the competitive implications of AMD's close ties with Meta and OpenAI, they should take solace in the fact that AMD is willing to dilute its own shareholders in the process. Meta and OpenAI could each be entitled to purchase up to 160 million shares of AMD's common stock, if all vesting milestones are reached. That's equal to roughly 20% of AMD's current 1.63 billion shares outstanding. AMD YTD mountain Advanced Micro Devices YTD The market, for now, seems to be looking past any future dilution concerns, sending AMD shares up more than 10% at their highs of Tuesday's session. If a gain of that magnitude were to hold at the close, the stock would turn positive for the year. Meta shares were up modestly but still down for 2026 on worries about how much money the company is spending in the AI race. When Nvidia announced its own blockbuster chip deal with Meta last week, giving away a chunk of the company to the Instagram parent was nowhere to be found in the press release. A search of securities filings for any additional disclosures turned up nothing. Meanwhile, Nvidia is actually in talks to invest up to $30 billion in OpenAI , not the other way around. "AMD is working out of a position of weakness," Jim said Tuesday on the Morning Meeting. Nvidia, on the other hand, is clearly operating from a position of strength, despite competition from AMD and custom silicon from the likes of Google parent Alphabet and its design partner Broadcom , a fellow Club stock. Nvidia has piles of cash that it's using to invest in companies â such as Intel , CoreWeave , and Synopsys , in addition to OpenAI and other startups â and to spend on its own innovation efforts to stay steps ahead in the technology race. Having the best technology enables companies to reach supply agreements on merit without having to give up stock. Club name Corning also demonstrated that in January, when it agreed to sell $6 billion worth of fiber-optic data center cabling to Meta. No equity awards needed. If one of Nvidia's customers decided to drop them, the demand would likely be picked up somewhere else. AMD doesn't have that luxury at this point, which explains why it is offering Meta skin in the game. The competitive dynamics will still be a discussion point on Wednesday night when Nvidia reports earnings . For its part, AMD defends the decision to offer Meta and OpenAI ownership stakes in the company. In the press releases for both deals, AMD said the agreements will be accretive to its adjusted earnings per share. The Meta tie-up, in particular, is "absolutely a win-win from our shareholders' standpoint," Su said on CNBC. She stressed that the equity awards are performance-based, rather than just a blank-check issuance. In other words, AMD will be generating billions in revenue from Meta before investors need to worry about dilution. "What we want to do is place bets on who we think are going to be the winners in AI innovation going forward. This is about a strategic partnership," Su said. "It really is clearly an opportunity to expand beyond what a regular commercial deal would've been." Su also fielded questions on the equity awards during a question-and-answer call with Wall Street analysts Tuesday morning. Vivek Arya of Bank of America pointedly asked: "If the product is so good, why does AMD need to give up 10% of your equity?" In response, Su repeated that the deal will help grow AMD's earnings per share. She also said investors should consider "what it's doing across our entire roadmap and our future roadmap going forward." With Meta in line for an ownership stake in AMD, Su said the companies have aligned incentives. And, as Meta puts billions of dollars' worth of AMD GPUs into its data centers, AMD will benefit from that increased revenue scale and ecosystem maturity, she argued. All of that may be true. We don't necessarily fault AMD for inking these agreements because AI is such a lucrative market. For a compute-starved Meta, it makes plenty of sense to secure chips from multiple avenues, too. Still, it is yet another reminder that Nvidia remains in a league of its own â and shareholders like us aren't forced to take a smaller piece of the pie to keep it that way. (Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust is long NVDA. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.

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Why AMD's megadeal with Meta shows Nvidia is still the best game in town

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