AMD Stock Is Up 13% Today – Is It Outperforming Other CPU Companies Like ARM?

Shares of Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) are up 13% successful Friday greeting trading, changing hands adjacent $346 aft closing Thursday astatine $305.33. The determination pushes AMD banal to a caller grounds precocious and caps a blistering agelong that has lifted the banal 63% successful the past month.

Is AMD banal outperforming its peers successful the highly competitory CPU sector, though? Let's commencement by examining what's pushing AMD shares up today.

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The catalyst is two-fold. Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) posted a blowout Q1 2026 study aft Thursday's close, delivering non-GAAP EPS of $0.29 versus $0.013 expected connected gross of $13.58B, lifting the full semiconductor complex. Intel itself is up 23.38% this morning, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index crossed 10,000 for the archetypal time.

Layered connected top: AMD banal was upgraded to Buy, with Barron's calling the institution "the large victor of Intel earnings." The upgrade thesis rests connected a elemental idea. Intel's AI CPU traction validates that x86 CPUs are inactive cardinal to the AI build-out, and AMD is positioned to seizure stock connected some sides of the information center: EPYC server chips and Instinct AI accelerators.

AMD's astir caller 4th already showed that dynamic, with Data Center gross hitting a grounds $5.38B, up 39% twelvemonth implicit year. CEO Lisa Su told investors that AMD is "entering 2026 with beardown momentum crossed our business, led by accelerating adoption of our high-performance EPYC and Ryzen CPUs and the accelerated scaling of our information halfway AI franchise."

Here is wherever the header question gets much interesting. Arm Holdings (NASDAQ:ARM) is up 16% today, fundamentally matching (and by immoderate reads beating) AMD's move. On a year-to-date basis, Arm is really ahead: +102% for ARM versus +57% for AMD. So, picking a victor depends connected your clip frame.