Demand explosion and tight supply, why is AMD instead hiring on a large scale?

As AI infrastructure construction accelerates, the memory chip market is experiencing a price surge. According to Counterpoint Research forecasts, the price of server Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) has risen significantly by 2025, and is expected to continue increasing by another 40% by Q2 2026. Among this wave of price increases, memory chip manufacturers have become the biggest winners—Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron achieved gains of 15.9%, 11.5%, and 16.3% respectively at the beginning of the year.

GPU Demand Drives Hiring Boom

The surge in memory prices is driven by the massive demand for AI infrastructure. Cloud service providers are investing billions of dollars to expand data centers, which require high-performance processors and large-capacity high-speed memory. AMD, as a GPU manufacturer, is directly participating in this boom, with its graphics processing units widely used for AI model training and inference computing.

For this reason, AMD CEO Lisa Su made an unexpected announcement at the CES Las Vegas forum: the company has not cut jobs due to AI technology—in fact, it is expanding its recruitment efforts across the board. “We are not hiring fewer people,” Lisa Su said, “Our company is growing rapidly, so all teams are hiring extensively, but the profile of the talent we are recruiting has changed—we are prioritizing professionals with AI technical backgrounds.”

AI Reshaping Business Operations

This recruitment shift reflects internal strategic adjustments at AMD. The company has integrated AI capabilities into the entire process of chip design, testing, and manufacturing. Lisa Su revealed that candidates with strong AI tool proficiency are given priority during hiring. The company, with 28,000 employees worldwide, is upgrading its talent structure through this approach.

Lisa Su emphasized that AI is expanding rather than replacing human labor. “AI amplifies our capabilities,” she pointed out, “It is not about replacing people but about increasing productivity and the number of products we can launch simultaneously.”

This statement contrasts with recent remarks by Neel Kashkari, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Kashkari has said that AI is prompting large companies to cut back on hiring, and the labor market may face long-term shortages and increased turnover. However, AMD’s data suggests another possibility—the boom on the demand side is creating numerous high-skilled jobs.

Memory Chips Become the Main Focus

From an investment perspective, the outlook for memory chip manufacturers is more optimistic. Data from LSEG indicates that Samsung’s operating profit is expected to grow by 140% in Q4, while Micron’s earnings per share are projected to increase by over 400% year-over-year. Quilter Cheviot’s Chief Technical Research Officer Ben Barringer pointed out that recent gains in the chip industry are mainly driven by memory chips rather than logic chips, which is due to the imbalance between AI demand and supply.

This supply-demand pattern is expected to persist in the foreseeable future, creating opportunities for all participants in the semiconductor ecosystem—whether chip designers like AMD or memory producers like Samsung and SK Hynix.