Catenaa, Friday, April 24, 2026- AMD shares soared to an all-time high on Friday as Wall Street analysts were caught off guard by Intel’s CPU performance, which they believe will translate to other big CPU makers.
“We figured CPUs were the next big bottleneck, but Intel’s results indicate that is already translating to very significant upside,” D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria wrote in a Friday note.
“The CPU is reinserting itself as an indispensable foundation of the AI era, and the once sleepy CPU market has taken off as agentic workloads shift compute needs beyond graphics processing units produced by companies such as Nvidia.
Luria upgraded AMD to buy from neutral and hiked his 2026 revenue and gross profit margins. He also hiked his price target on the stock to $375, implying upside of 22% from Thursday’s close.
AMD stock surged over 13% on Friday, and the stock is up by over 68% since March 24.
\This comes off the back of Intel also issuing stronger-than-expected guidance for the second quarter. Other analysts on the Street took notice as well.
“Intel now expects double-digit server CPU unit growth in 2026, up from their prior expectations of only slight growth six months ago,” Citi analyst Atif Malik wrote on Friday. He also upgraded the stock to buy from neutral.
Wall Street sees CPU makers and data center gear providers improving as a group, on the Intel news, with AMD front and center.
“Based on signs of better participation in high AI infrastructure growth, we are significantly increasing our price target to align INTC’s target multiple with the company’s AI infrastructure peers AMD, MRVL, CRDO, and ALAB (all Buy rated),” Suji Desilva of Roth wrote Friday.
Barclays’ Tom O’Malley, meanwhile, wondered whether Intel could lose market share to rival AMD.
“Our downside case of $40 is based upon 47x our downside CY27 PF EPS of $0.85, which assumes greater share loss to AMD,” he wrote, citing other factors as well. Intel traded around $81 early Friday.
AMD has earned bullish ratings from prominent investment banks. In early 2026, several top-tier banks significantly lifted their long-term forecasts for AMD.
Goldman Sachs recently raised its 2027 revenue projection for AMD from $45.9 billion to $68.7 billion, citing the “OpenAI + Meta + Oracle” deployment scale.
Analysts are projecting a step-change in earnings, with EPS expected to climb from roughly $5.93 in 2026 to over $10 by 2027.
AMD is also often seen as a cheaper way to play the AI revolution compared to NVIDIA’s high-teens revenue multiples.
The stock is trading at approximately 24x forward 2027 earnings. For investors who missed the initial NVIDIA run, AMD represents the most liquid and credible second source in a market where AI chips are being rationed.
