When Lisa Su grew to become CEO of Superior Micro Gadgets (AMD) a decade in the past, it hardly resembled a multibillion-dollar firm.
AMD inventory was languishing round $3 per share. The corporate had minimize about 25% of its employees, in response to Time. However beneath Su’s management, the chipmaker has flourished: Right this moment, AMD has a market cap of $205.95 billion and its inventory trades at roughly $127 per share.
Su was named Time’s CEO of the 12 months for 2024 on Tuesday, and the 55-year-old’s web price has soared alongside AMD’s success — as much as $1.3 billion, Forbes estimated in April. For comparability, Su was paid a base wage of $1 million and a performance-based bonus of $1.2 million in 2014 when she took over as CEO, the Seattle Instances reported in 2020.
Born in Taiwan, Su immigrated to the U.S. together with her dad and mom at age 3 so her father, a mathematician, may attend graduate faculty in New York. Rising up, “my father used to quiz me with math tables on the eating room desk,” she instructed Forbes final 12 months. “That is how I first acquired into math.”
Su wasn’t initially all for following her father’s footsteps right into a STEM profession. As a young person, she dreamed of changing into a live performance pianist, she mentioned: “I wasn’t ok to do this, so I grew to become an engineer.”
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She earned bachelor’s, grasp’s and doctoral levels in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how, and spent her early profession working in a wide range of roles at Texas Devices and IBM within the Nineties — each enormous tech corporations, throughout that period.
“I used to be actually fortunate early in my profession,” Su instructed Time. “Each two years, I did a special factor.”
In 2012, Su was employed at AMD as a senior vp and basic supervisor of the corporate’s world enterprise models, in response to her LinkedIn profile. Two years later, she ascended to the CEO function, changing into the primary girl to guide AMD because the firm’s founding in 1969.
“I felt like I used to be in coaching for the chance to do one thing significant within the semiconductor business,” she mentioned. “And AMD was my shot.”
Taking part in the lengthy recreation
Su is considered one of few Fortune 500 CEOs with a PhD. Her engineering background helped her spearhead a few of the technological improvements — together with a brand new quicker CPU chip for computer systems — that drove AMD’s latest success.
Pals and colleagues describe her as a “shrewd strategist,” and he or she generally holds conferences on weekends and expects staff to work previous midnight, Time reported. Her excessive expectations could make it difficult for individuals to outlive at AMD long-term, tech business analyst and former AMD govt Patrick Moorhead instructed the journal.
That is perhaps by design: “I do not consider leaders are born. I consider leaders are educated,” mentioned Su.
Upon changing into CEO, Su promoted a three-part plan to assist AMD compete with rivals Intel and Nvidia, Time reported: promote solely high-quality merchandise, deepen buyer belief and simplify the agency’s operations. The long-term plan took time to pay dividends, however in 2022, AMD surpassed Intel in each market worth and annual income.
Nvidia, however, is not simply the world’s largest chipmaker — it just lately overtook Apple because the world’s Most worthy publicly traded firm. However Su measures success in a long time, not quarters, she mentioned.
“If you spend money on a brand new space, it’s a five- to 10-year arc to actually construct out the entire numerous items,” mentioned Su. “The factor about our enterprise is, every little thing takes time.”
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