AMD Chair & CEO1969–present

    Lisa Su

    The Woman Who Saved AMD From the Brink and Rewired the Future of Computing

    Born Lisa Tzwu-Fang Su on 7 November 1969 in Tainan, Taiwan, Lisa Su moved to New York at three, earned a PhD at MIT and rose through IBM and Freescale before becoming AMD's chief executive in 2014 — leading a turnaround from near collapse to a company with $34.6 billion in revenue in 2025.

    • 17 min listen
    • AMD chief executive
    • Semiconductor engineer
    • Turnaround leader
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    Lisa Su’s full 17 min audio biography, The Woman Who Saved AMD From the Brink and Rewired the Future of Computing, is available on Lyfestori for iOS. Listen to a free preview below.

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    A life in brief

    Lisa Su: life and timeline.

    At ten, in Queens, she opened her brother's broken remote-control car, found a loose wire and made it run again. Lisa Su chose electrical engineering at MIT because it looked like the hardest major, earned three degrees there by twenty-four, and spent thirteen years at IBM working on copper chip wiring and the PlayStation 3's Cell processor. In October 2014 she took over AMD, whose shares were trading near three dollars. She bet the company on a new processor design called Zen.

    1. 1969

      Born in Tainan

      Born 7 November in Tainan, Taiwan, to a statistician father and an accountant mother. When she is three the family emigrates to Queens, New York, where her parents name three acceptable careers: doctor, concert pianist or engineer.

    2. 1986

      Bronx Science

      Graduates from the Bronx High School of Science, where she is on the maths team, and heads to MIT to study electrical engineering because it seems the most difficult major.

    3. 1994

      PhD at MIT

      Completes a PhD on silicon-on-insulator transistors after a bachelor's in 1990 and a master's in 1991 — all at MIT. Her undergraduate summers are spent interning at Analog Devices.

    4. 1995

      Joins IBM

      After a short spell at Texas Instruments she joins IBM's research division in February, moving towards the hardest problem on offer: replacing aluminium wiring inside chips with copper.

    5. 1998

      Copper chips

      IBM launches its copper interconnect technology, which Su helped develop. It makes chips faster and becomes an industry standard.

    6. 2000

      Technical assistant to Lou Gerstner

      Spends a year as technical assistant to IBM's chief executive, then chooses management over the technical track and leads the Emerging Products division, which works on the Cell processor for Sony's PlayStation 3.

    7. 2007

      Freescale

      Leaves IBM as a vice president of semiconductor research and development to become chief technology officer of Freescale Semiconductor, later running its networking and multimedia business.

    8. 2012

      Joins AMD

      Arrives in January as a senior vice president and general manager, at a company whose processors trail Intel's and whose finances are deteriorating.

    9. 2014

      Chief executive

      Becomes president and CEO in October, succeeding Rory Read. Her plan fits on one page: build great products, deepen customer relationships, simplify everything.

    10. 2017

      Ryzen and EPYC

      The Zen architecture reaches the market: Ryzen desktop chips in March, with eight cores for $329, and EPYC server processors in June.

    11. 2022

      Xilinx and the chair

      Closes the roughly $49 billion purchase of programmable-chip maker Xilinx in February and becomes chair of AMD's board.

    12. 2024

      Time CEO of the Year

      Time names her its CEO of the Year as AMD's Instinct accelerators win orders from Microsoft, Meta and Oracle in the AI chip market dominated by Nvidia.

    Major achievements

    Lisa Su: major achievements.

    • 01

      The AMD turnaround

      AMD was worth a few billion dollars when she took over in 2014. By 2025 it reported record revenue of $34.6 billion, and its market value had passed Intel's.

    • 02

      The Zen bet

      With architect Jim Keller and a rebuilt engineering team, AMD scrapped its old processor design and started over. Ryzen and EPYC, launched in 2017, made AMD competitive again in PCs and servers.

    • 03

      Moving manufacturing to TSMC

      As GlobalFoundries fell behind at advanced nodes, AMD renegotiated its wafer supply agreement so its leading-edge chips could be made at TSMC — unglamorous contract work that made the product roadmap possible.

    • 04

      Copper interconnects at IBM

      She played a key role in IBM's 1998 copper wiring technology, solving the problem of copper contaminating silicon and producing faster chips that the industry adopted.

    • 05

      Firsts in the industry

      The first woman to receive the IEEE Robert N. Noyce Medal, in 2021, and the first woman to top the Associated Press CEO pay survey, for 2019. MIT named Building 12, home of MIT.nano, after her in 2022.

    Turning points

    Lisa Su: defining moments.

    • Age ten

      The broken toy car

      Reconnecting a loose wire in her brother's remote-control car gave her the satisfaction of diagnosing a problem and fixing it herself. She has described it as the start of her desire to work on things.

    • 2000

      Choosing management

      A year beside Lou Gerstner showed her how technology decisions look from the boardroom. IBM asked rising engineers to choose between the Fellow track and management; she chose management, joking that she was not smart enough to be a Fellow.

    • 2014

      Taking the job no one wanted

      AMD carried more than two billion dollars of debt, had announced repeated layoffs and was losing money. She took the chief executive role anyway and committed the company to a multi-year, clean-sheet processor design.

    • 2017–2019

      Zen and Rome

      Ryzen proved the design in 2017. The second-generation EPYC chip, codenamed Rome, used a chiplet design with up to sixty-four cores in 2019 and brought cloud companies such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google back to AMD.

    What you’ll take away

    Lessons from Lisa Su’s life.

    1. 01

      Move to where the problems are

      At IBM she left her own speciality to work on copper wiring because that was the urgent problem. The habit — choosing the hardest thing in the room — shaped every step after.

    2. 02

      A short plan, held for years

      Three priorities written on a single page guided AMD for a decade. Simplicity made it possible to say no to everything that did not serve them.

    3. 03

      Technical depth is a strategic asset

      Su could judge the Zen roadmap herself as a semiconductor engineer. That conviction let her bet the company when analysts doubted it would survive.

    FAQ

    Frequently asked questions about Lisa Su.

    What is Lisa Su's full name?

    Lisa Tzwu-Fang Su. She was born on 7 November 1969 in Tainan, Taiwan.

    What is Lisa Su's net worth?

    About $2.9 billion, according to Forbes's 2026 America's Richest Immigrants list (July 2026). Almost all of it is AMD stock built up through equity awards since she became chief executive in 2014; AMD's 2025 proxy statement listed her as the beneficial owner of about 4.7 million shares.

    How did Lisa Su make her money?

    Through her pay as AMD's chief executive, which is weighted heavily towards stock and options rather than salary. As AMD's share price rose many times over during her tenure, those awards grew into a holding worth billions, even though she did not found the company and owns well under 1% of it.

    Where is Lisa Su from?

    Tainan, Taiwan, and Queens, New York. She was born in Tainan and moved to the United States with her parents at the age of three, growing up in Queens.

    Where did Lisa Su go to college?

    MIT. She earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1990, a master's in 1991 and a PhD in 1994, all at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before that she attended the Bronx High School of Science.

    When did Lisa Su become CEO of AMD?

    In October 2014. She had joined AMD in January 2012 as a senior vice president and succeeded Rory Read as president and chief executive; she also became chair in 2022.

    How did Lisa Su save AMD?

    By betting on a new processor architecture. Under her, AMD built the Zen design from scratch, moved manufacturing of its leading chips to TSMC and launched Ryzen and EPYC in 2017, regaining ground on Intel in PCs and servers.

    Is Lisa Su related to Jensen Huang?

    Yes. Lisa Su's mother and Nvidia's chief executive Jensen Huang are first cousins, making Su and Huang first cousins once removed. They did not grow up together and only met later in their careers.

    Did Lisa Su found AMD?

    No. AMD was founded in 1969 by Jerry Sanders and colleagues. Su joined in 2012 and has led the company since 2014.

    Is Lisa Su still CEO of AMD?

    Yes. As of 2026 she is chair and chief executive of AMD, the roles she has combined since 2022.

    Published by Lyfestori, from Duck Pond Ventures Oy. About us and how to report a correction.

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