A decade ago, she inherited a struggling chipmaker and now she's worth $1 billion: "Patience pays off."

A decade ago, she inherited a struggling chipmaker and now she's worth $1 billion: "Patience pays off."
A decade ago, she inherited a struggling chipmaker and now she's worth $1 billion: "Patience pays off."

A decade ago, when Lisa Su became CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), the company was not the multibillion-dollar enterprise it is today.

Despite cutting about 25% of its staff, AMD's stock has flourished under Su's leadership. Today, the chipmaker has a market cap of $205.95 billion and its stock trades at roughly $127 per share.

In 2024, Su was named Time's CEO of the Year and her net worth increased to $1.3 billion, Forbes estimated in April. In comparison, Su's base salary was $1 million and she received a performance-based bonus of $1.2 million in 2014 when she became CEO, according to the Seattle Times in 2020.

Su, who was born in Taiwan and immigrated to the U.S. with her parents at age 3, grew up with her father, a mathematician, quizzing her with math tables at the dining room table. This sparked her interest in math.

As a teenager, Su dreamed of becoming a concert pianist but realized she wasn't skilled enough, so she pursued a career in engineering instead.

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She obtained bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and began her career in the 1990s, working in various roles at Texas Instruments and IBM, two prominent tech companies during that time.

"Su shared with Time that she was fortunate in the early stages of her career as she did something different every two years."

In 2014, Su became the CEO of AMD, becoming the first woman to hold the position since the company's inception in 1969.

"She felt like she was preparing for a significant role in the semiconductor industry, and AMD presented her with that opportunity."

Playing the long game

AMD's recent success was driven by technological innovations spearheaded by CEO Su, one of few Fortune 500 CEOs with a PhD in engineering.

The tech industry analyst and former AMD executive Patrick Moorhead stated in Time that her high expectations can make it difficult for people to endure at AMD in the long run, as she is described by friends and colleagues as a "shrewd strategist" who sometimes conducts meetings on weekends and expects employees to work past midnight.

Su stated that she believes leaders are not innate, but rather trained.

As CEO, Su implemented a three-part plan to help AMD compete with Intel and Nvidia, which included selling only high-quality products, building customer trust, and streamlining operations. Despite taking time to see results, by 2022, AMD had surpassed Intel in both market value and annual revenue.

While Nvidia is the world's largest chipmaker, it recently surpassed Apple as the most valuable publicly traded company. However, Su defines success in terms of decades, not quarters.

"Building out all the pieces in a new investment area takes five to ten years, as Su explained," said Su. "Our business operates on the principle that everything requires time."

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