AMD stock rallies above $170 with bullish analyst calls: should you buy?

AMD stock jumped over 2% on Thursday, climbing above $170 as a wave of good news got investors excited about the chipmaker again.

This surge was sparked by several factors: new analyst upgrades, strong momentum in AMD's artificial intelligence chip business, and a strategic partnership that has Wall Street paying close attention to the company's future.

What's really grabbing investors' attention is the growing belief that AMD is no longer just a second-place player fighting for scraps against Nvidia and Intel.

There is a real sense that AMD has built something significant in next-generation computing, especially in the crucial data center and AI markets where all the action is.

What are the drivers behind AMD stock surge?

The recent climb in AMD stock is being driven by a few key wins that show the company is making some serious progress in the valuable AI chip market.

The biggest factor is the hype building around AMD's MI350 Instinct GPU series. It’s being pitched as a real, viable alternative to Nvidia’s super expensive H100 chips.

Specifically, the MI355X is getting a lot of attention from big cloud providers and enterprise clients who want to upgrade their AI systems without completely blowing their budget.

The performance you get for the price seems to be hitting a sweet spot that's tough for cost-conscious buyers to ignore. What might be even more significant is the momentum behind AMD’s ROCm software platform.

This open-source alternative to Nvidia’s CUDA ecosystem is finally gaining some real traction with developers, and that's critical for the long haul.

In the world of tech, the software that people actually use often matters more than the hardware specs, and it looks like AMD is finally making genuine inroads on that front.

And as if that wasn't enough, AMD's recent partnership announcement with IBM gave the stock another boost.

The two companies are teaming up to advance quantum-centric supercomputing, combining AMD’s high-performance CPUs with IBM’s quantum systems to create what they believe could be a truly game-changing platform for next-gen computing.

Should you buy?

Wall Street is really starting to pay attention to AMD's momentum, with several big-name firms upgrading their outlooks on the stock.

Perhaps the most bullish move came from Truist Securities, which upgraded AMD from a "Hold" to a "Buy" and hiked its price target from $173 all the way up to $213.

The firm pointed to faster-than-expected adoption of AI chips by businesses and growing interest from major cloud providers as the key reasons for its optimism.

HSBC has also kept its "Buy" rating with a $200 price target.

What's interesting is their focus on AMD's ability to compete on both price and innovation, specifically highlighting how chips like the MI355X are coming in around 30% cheaper than comparable Nvidia products while still offering competitive performance.

From a technical perspective, the stock's chart looks promising. AMD is currently hovering around a key resistance level at $175.

If it can convincingly break past that, there's a clear path to the $200 to $215 range that analysts have been targeting.