How chipmaker AMD has retained its high growth trajectory in India

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), one of the top three semiconductor firms in the world, continued its dream run in the country with its India arm, which is engaged in the business of design development and support of application solutions services for semiconductor products, retaining its high growth trajectory. 

The company had taken a flight after three straight years of strong 20-25% growth between FY17-FY20, sporting over 50% growth in business starting with the first year under the pandemic. 

This accelerated in FY22 to over 60% growth and remained robust at nearly 54% rise in the year ended March 2023, as per data collated by VCCEdge, a data research platform and sister concern of TechCircle. 

The Indian unit was involved with various products and functions including Raphael, Phoenix, Dragon Range, MI300, Strix, Strix-Halo, Granite Ridge, Krackan, Rolling Stones, Bergamo, Breithorn, Omkara, Weisshorn, Navi 3x, Navi 41, Navi 44, V2000, Arden, Viola, and Milan-X. This includes pre-silicon, silicon design work as well as post-silicon platform and software engineering work. 

Even if the pace slows down in the current year, the California-headquartered company looks poised to cross the milestone of half-a-billion dollars in revenue in India during the year ending March 2024. 

AMD did not respond to TechCircle's queries.

Notably, the company has seen a starker performance in terms of profitability. Over the last five years, while the topline has grown around 6-fold, net profit has risen over ten times. 

A pivotal moment during the last two years was the launch of AMD's highly anticipated central processing unit (CPU), Ryzen 5000. Notably, in the same year, the US-based chipmaker unveiled plans to acquire Xilinx for a staggering estimated sum of $50 billion—a landmark deal in the semiconductor industry, eventually completed in 2022. 

Amid the launch of India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) and the announcement of production-linked incentives (PLI) and design-linked incentives (DLI), along with the bid to move beyond just the US and China, a lot of chipmakers are looking at India as a lucrative destination. AMD is one of such companies. 

During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US in July 2023, AMD announced plans to invest $400 million in India over the next five years. The planned investment includes a new AMD campus in Bangalore that will serve as the company’s largest research and development (R&D) facility in the world. The ground-breaking ceremony of the facility, spread across a 500,000-square-foot area, was recently held in November. 

To date, 25% of this investment has already been spent towards building the new Bengaluru centre, hiring, and other expenses, the company said. The second phase is slated to come up by the third quarter of next year. 

In an interaction with TechCircle during the inauguration of the facility, Jaya Jagadish, the India country head said that the company’s growth in the country, which houses 25% of the overall workforce strength, has been ‘phenomenal’. She added that AMD India has grown up to five times in the last six years. 

Globally, AMD is preparing itself for the launch of MI300, its processor for AI-based tasks. “The launch of MI300 will be the fastest ramp to $1 billion, which is the highest in AMD’s history. We also project $2 billion in sales from this product by 2024,” said Mark Papermaster during an interview with TechCircle on the sidelines of the India facility launch last month. 

If we compare AMD with Intel, which has a much bigger presence in India, while Intel has doubled its business in last three years, AMD had nearly quadrupled its size in the same period.