Rumour: AMD CEO and President Lisa Su set to leave AMD, eyeing up IBM move

Long-time AMD CEO Lisa Su could be set to leave the American multinational GPU and CPU company according to a report from WCCFTech. Take as big a pinch of salt as you feel necessary for this one, but they claim inside sources have indicated Su is headed for bigger and better paychecks things with a role at IBM.

Lisa Su has been president and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices since October 2014, steering AMD from sinking ship to resurgent force over the past five or so years. She has quite clearly proven herself one of the most capable CEOs around and could pretty much have her pick of the top jobs. 

The report suggests Su is potentially moving to a position at second in command at IBM, with the aim of one day becoming CEO and replacing Ginni Rometty. 

Now, working for IBM sounds a heck of a lot more boring than AMD, but it’s worth bearing in mind IBM is currently worth around four times as much AMD ($124.7B vs $30.38) and also have a workforce 35 times larger. It would be a step up, no doubt about it, even if heading in as the second in command.

It would all mean further talent bleed from AMD, however. They’ve done just fine so far despite the departures of Raja Koduri, Jim Anderson, Mike Rayfield, and more, but there’s definitely a feeling their best and brightest are gradually being poached by the competition.

In the event of Lisa Su’s departure, all eyes will be on here successor. WCCF’s report claims Rick Bergman is the current frontrunner. It was announced just yesterday that Bergman had rejoined AMD having been president at Synaptics for the past eight years. He has joined AMD as executive vice president of Computing and Graphics. I’d have to say I’d be surprised if they’d hired him to such a role knowing it would be so temporary but we’ll have to see.

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