It's not just Intel that investors are loving right now: At over $450 billion, AMD's market cap is the highest it's ever been in 54 years

Earlier this week, Intel's bean counters were buoyed by a spot of good news: Its market capitalization had pushed well past $300 billion for the first time since October 2000. Now it's AMD's turn to celebrate because its cap is now the highest it has ever been, since the chip giant went public back in 1972.

As I don't make a habit of keeping one eye on market news every day, I have to thank our chums at Tom's Hardware for spotting this. Though having just written that, I'll probably have an editor glaring at me and asking, 'Why don't you do that?' Well, truth be told, market cap figures are really only of interest to investors and stock market wheeler-dealers.

For tech nerds such as myself, it doesn't actually tell me anything about how well a company is doing in terms of revenue and profits. But as someone once said, business isn't necessarily about how much cash you make, but how much cash people think you can make.

And that's probably why, if you look at CompaniesMarketCap's chart for AMD, the line is doing a sterling job of heading ever upwards. The question to ask here, of course, is why AMD's share price is constantly increasing right now.

In part, it will be down to the fact that AMD is actually doing rather well at the moment, in financial terms. In 2025, Team Red achieved a total revenue of $34.6 billion, an increase of 34% compared to the previous year, and its operating income grew by a similar amount (a 27% climb from $1.9 billion in 2024).

But as I said, investors aren't necessarily all that concerned about how much money AMD is actually making right now. It's about the potential that the company has, and given that it is one of the few companies that is in a position to mass-produce the enormous accelerators required for AI data centers, that potential is very high.

Investors will be looking for companies that can tap into the seemingly endless stream of money that AI is able to accrue, while Nvidia is currently filling its buckets to the brim from the gushing cash taps, AMD and Intel are next in line.

This is why Team Red are so heavily invested in AI at the moment, and just about every product it releases is rubberstamped with TOPS. Only its desktop Ryzen chips are free of such labels, but with the Zen 6 architecture expected to appear at some point this year, I wouldn't be surprised if they follow suit.

Many years ago, I had a handful of AMD shares, but it was during the time when it was at its lowest point, so I rapidly got rid of them. Ah, if only I had a crystal ball then.