Some chip companies are thought to be big winners as Facebook parent Meta Platforms ups its spending
Shares of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. posted their best day in 15 months Monday after the company announced new products and disclosed that Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. would use its Epyc processors.
“We are building significant momentum in the data center with our leadership product portfolio, including Meta’s adoption of AMD EPYC to power their infrastructure and the buildout of Frontier, the first U.S. exascale supercomputer which will be powered by EPYC and AMD Instinct processors,” Chief Executive Lisa Su said in a release.
AMD’s stock AMD, +10.14% gained 10.1% following the announcements to record its largest single-day percentage gain since July 29, 2020, when the stock rallied 12.5%.
AMD’s Epyc is “now designed into the datacenters of 10 of the world’s largest hyperscalers,” Su said in the keynote address of the company’s virtual Accelerated Data Center Premiere event.
The announcements come amid growing enthusiasm for the role that hardware companies can play in helping tech giants build out the “metaverse,” or a virtual world in which people can connect.
“Meta FB, -0.74% has given a monster capex guide for next year that AMD seems set to benefit from at least in part, & of course these days anything associated with ‘Meta’ is catching a bid,” Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon wrote in a note.
Fellow chip player Nvidia Corp. NVDA, +3.54% is set to hold its own keynote address Tuesday as part of its GTC developer conference, and analysts have been upbeat about that company’s “metaverse” opportunities as well. Nvidia is expected to make announcements around its Omniverse Enterprise offering, which the company says is a “collaboration and simulation platform” that enables “3D workflows.”
Shares of AMD have gained 36% over the past three months as Nvidia shares have increased 51%. The S&P 500 SPX, +0.09% has added 6% in that span, while the PHLX Semiconductor Index SOX, +1.25% has advanced 11%.