Raymond James upgrades AMD to Strong Buy with $641 price target on AI datacenter momentum

Raymond James just handed AMD one of its most aggressive price targets on Wall Street, upgrading the chipmaker to Strong Buy from Outperform and setting a $641 target. That’s up from $565, and it reflects a thesis that AMD’s AI and datacenter business is entering a fundamentally different growth phase.

The upgrade, issued on August 25, 2026, was led by senior semiconductor analyst Srini Pajjuri, who has developed what the firm calls an “AI Factory” framework to model the accelerating demand for server CPUs. The core argument: AI workloads are creating an entirely new category of CPU demand that sits on top of, rather than replacing, conventional datacenter needs.

The numbers backing the bull case

AMD’s Q2 2026 earnings gave Pajjuri plenty of ammunition. Data Center revenue surged 107% year-over-year, blowing past analyst expectations and confirming that the company’s server CPU lineup is winning share in real time.

Raymond James projects a 44% compound annual growth rate for AMD’s relevant revenue, with the firm modeling a path to $201 billion by calendar year 2030.

For context, this upgrade marks a dramatic escalation in Raymond James’s own conviction. The firm initiated coverage of AMD back in November 2025 with an Outperform rating and a $337 price target. In roughly nine months, the target has nearly doubled.

AMD’s competitive positioning

The upgrade puts AMD squarely in the conversation with NVIDIA and Intel as the three companies jockeying for dominance in AI infrastructure. Each is approaching the market from a different angle: NVIDIA through GPUs and full-stack AI platforms, Intel through its own datacenter CPU and accelerator roadmap, and AMD through a combination of high-performance CPUs and GPU accelerators.

What makes AMD’s position interesting is its dual-threat capability. The company competes with Intel on server CPUs through its EPYC lineup while simultaneously challenging NVIDIA with its Instinct accelerators.

The 107% year-over-year Data Center revenue growth suggests AMD is already converting competitive positioning into actual market share gains.

What the upgrade signals for the broader market

The 44% CAGR projection suggests AMD’s growth rate will outpace the broader semiconductor industry by a wide margin. If that forecast proves accurate, it would imply AMD is not just riding the AI wave but actively taking share from competitors while the market itself expands.

The progression of Raymond James’s own estimates tells a story about how quickly consensus can shift in semiconductors. Going from a $337 target at initiation to $641 in under a year suggests the firm believes the market is still catching up to the scale of AMD’s AI opportunity.

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