Why Wall Street is looking ahead to this major event for AMD stock

Advanced Micro Devices NASDAQ:AMD shares fell 1.19% on Friday even as investors looked ahead to the chipmaker's Advancing AI 2026 event next week in San Francisco.

Analysts expect the company to unveil new artificial intelligence products, customer wins, and long-term growth plans in the event.

The event marks AMD's first dedicated AI showcase since June 2025, when it introduced its MI350 series GPUs and previewed its Helios rack system.

Wall Street will be closely watching for updates on AMD's next-generation accelerators, customer adoption, and its strategy to challenge Nvidia in the rapidly expanding AI infrastructure market.

Analysts expect AI roadmap and customer announcements

Jefferies expects AMD to increase its estimate for the total addressable market for AI CPUs to more than $200 billion, surpassing the figure Nvidia presented in May.

The brokerage is also looking for additional details on AMD's next-generation MI500 GPU family and its broader scale-up roadmap, along with potential customer announcements.

According to Jefferies' Asia supply-chain checks, Microsoft has become a customer for AMD's MI400 series GPUs, joining previously disclosed customers OpenAI and Meta Platforms.

The firm said expectations are also building around a possible partnership announcement with Anthropic.

Analysts pointed to reports that the AI startup has been hiring engineers with ROCm experience, suggesting it could be preparing to diversify its AI computing infrastructure.

Jefferies cautioned that any new customer agreement should be evaluated based on its economics rather than the headline alone.

The firm noted that AMD has already committed 20% of the company to OpenAI and Meta, adding that future partnerships would ideally require smaller incentive packages.

According to the analysts, a more traditional commercial agreement with Anthropic would strengthen confidence in AMD's ability to win AI customers without relying on equity incentives.

Focus shifts to MI500 platform and networking strategy

Beyond customer wins, analysts expect AMD to provide fresh details on its MI500 series accelerators.

The company first previewed the platform during CES 2026, describing it as a CDNA 6-based architecture built on an advanced 2-nanometer manufacturing process with HBM4E memory and targeted for a 2027 launch.

AMD has claimed the platform could deliver a 1,000-times AI performance improvement compared with an eight-GPU MI300X node.

Jefferies expects AMD to discuss plans for a native Ultra Accelerator Link scale-up architecture supporting up to 256 GPUs per rack, a design that may require optical interconnect technology.

The brokerage is also looking for confirmation of a co-packaged optics strategy and potential supplier details.

It highlighted AMD's investment in Ayar Labs as well as its collaborations with Astera Labs on Ultra Accelerator Link and Broadcom on scale-up networking.

UBS raises price target ahead of AI event

UBS also turned more optimistic on AMD ahead of next week's event, raising its 12-month price target to $700 from $670 while maintaining a Buy rating.

The investment bank said recent supply-chain checks indicate stronger demand for AMD's AI accelerators through 2027.

UBS expects the Advancing AI event to feature updates on the MI450X accelerator, the MI500 GPU family and AMD's next-generation server processors.

The bank believes Amazon could emerge as a major customer for the MI450X platform and said Anthropic may also adopt AMD's AI chips, although it cautioned that customer announcements may not necessarily come during the event.

Reflecting its stronger outlook, UBS raised its 2027 revenue forecast for AMD to $83.4 billion, up from $79.2 billion, while increasing its earnings estimate for the year to $14.63 per share.

For investors, the Advancing AI event represents the next major catalyst as AMD seeks to demonstrate growing AI customer adoption and strengthen its position against Nvidia in the AI accelerator market.