Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) received a bullish upgrade from Raymond James analyst Simon Leopold, who raised his rating to Strong Buy from Outperform and increased his price target to $641 from $565. Based on AMD’s stock price of $456.75 on August 25, the new target implies about 40% upside. Leopold’s updated forecast focuses on the growing server CPU opportunity as AI workloads expand. He expects the server CPU market to grow at a 44% five-year CAGR and reach about $201 billion by 2030, driven by strong demand from both traditional data centers and AI-related systems. Leopold is a five-star analyst on TipRanks, ranking #120 out of 12,496 analysts tracked. He has a 60% success rate and an average return per rating of 30.30%.
Why Raymond James Is Bullish on AMD Stock
The upgrade reflects Leopold’s view that AMD can benefit from the expanding server CPU market. “AMD offers the strongest combination of direct earnings leverage, datacenter positioning and market-share gains,” Leopold said.
The analyst sees a bigger role for CPUs as AI systems become more complex. Accelerators handle the main model computations, while CPUs can manage tasks such as data retrieval and applications around those models. That could give AMD another source of server CPU demand as AI systems become more complex.
At the same time, Leopold does not expect AI growth to drive the same increase in CPU shipments. Better chip use and software efficiency could limit demand. Custom chips and workload offloading could also reduce the need for more processors.
Leopold’s $201 billion forecast is below AMD’s own $220 billion estimate. However, he said his forecast could reach AMD’s figure if AI agents are adopted faster. Higher usage of AI agents and tools could also lift demand.
Is AMD Stock a Buy, Sell, or Hold?
Turning to Wall Street, the analysts’ consensus rating for AMD is Strong Buy, based on 27 Buy and six Hold ratings over the past three months. With that comes an average AMD stock price target of $647.42, representing a potential 41.75% upside for the shares. Year-to-date, AMD stock has gained 113%. (See AMD Stock Forecast)
