AMD Rides the Chip Rally While Wall Street Splits on Where the Stock Goes Next

AMD shares jumped 9.5% in the previous session, carried higher by a broad recovery in semiconductor and AI-linked names as buyers returned following a sharp selloff in the space. Reuters reported the countermove came after the prior session's wide-ranging rout. Even so, the rebound unfolded against lingering worries about a possible slowdown in data-center construction and the cost of financing it.

The rally coincided with a wave of price-target revisions that pointed in opposite directions. HSBC raised its target on Thursday to $540 from $500 while keeping a "Hold" rating — the analysts did not tie the higher number to a more favorable view of the stock. BofA Securities moved the other way on Wednesday, trimming its target to $650 from $720 and leaving its "Buy" recommendation intact. Across Wednesday's batch of analyst actions, several cuts offset the increases, and every firm involved kept its rating unchanged: the valuation marks moved, but the underlying recommendations did not.

A Quantum Platform, and a Meta Bet

Separately, AMD said Thursday that it is teaming up with IBM and Oak Ridge National Laboratory on a joint development platform aimed at advancing the classical computing foundation for future quantum systems — keeping conventional hardware at the center of the effort.

That announcement followed an earlier expansion of AMD's strategic AI-infrastructure partnership with Meta on October 27. According to the company, AMD's Helios systems were installed and under test at the rack level at Meta, with broader deployment anticipated. AMD also said it would invest $1 billion in Meta's equity placement.

Helios Finds a Customer List

Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI are among the companies running workloads on the first Helios systems, AMD said. On the analyst side, Morgan Stanley lifted its AMD target to $550 from $510 on Wednesday, according to media reports, while leaving its rating as it was.

The company's third-quarter 2026 results showed revenue of $13.4 billion, up 45% year over year. Its data-center segment posted a record $8.5 billion, a 97% increase from a year earlier.

For the fourth quarter of 2026, AMD guided to revenue of roughly $17 billion, a forecast with a margin of plus or minus 3%, and projected a non-GAAP gross margin of about 55%.