AMD's Dr. Lisa Su predicts AI GPU market will grow to $500 billion by 2028 or 'roughly equivalent to annual sales for the entire semiconductor industry in 2023'

pcgamer.com:

It's increasingly difficult to walk through our front doors, turn on our TVs, or even steal a quick glance at our phones without being bombarded by the promises of a brave new world of AI. That's not just the case for AI tools and end-user benefits, either, because there also seem to be endless proclamations of limitless AI market growth and money-making potential.

AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su has once again thrown her name into the hat of AI market hopefuls—not without merit, either, I might add. In AMD's Q3 2024 earnings call (via Seeking Alpha), Su said, «In the Data Center alone, we expect the AI accelerator TAM will grow at more than 60% annually to $500 billion in 2028. To put that in context, this is roughly equivalent to annual sales for the entire semiconductor industry in 2023.»

It's no surprise that companies which stand to benefit from the AI industry doing well are often those who big it up, predicting the most wondrous successes. But, at the same time, it's difficult not to agree with them. The AI industry, after all, has grown massively over the last few years and had a market size of almost $200 billion last year.

There's certainly debate over whether the AI boom might be a financial bubble that's destined to burst, but bubble or not, unless and until it does burst, the market's still there.

Su's comments need to be understood with a little more context, however. For one, she's talking about the predicted «TAM» for AI GPUs in 2028, which means «total addressable market». This means the absolute maximum market value that the AI GPU market could achieve: an ideal number. The semiconductor market that Su compares this to did rake in about $500 billion in sales in 2023, but these were actual sales, not TAM.

So, Su's not really saying that the AI GPU market will be as big in 2028 as the semiconductor market is today, but the numbers do help get across the sheer scale of the predicted AI GPU boom. It's also important to remember the obvious: GPUs are made from