Morgan Stanley raises surging AMD stock price target
Few stocks have captured the Artificial Intelligence (AI) moment quite like Advanced Micro Devices.
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) has climbed 59% year to date, and the one year return stands at 245%, according to Yahoo Finance. Those numbers reflect a market that has decided AMD is no longer a distant second in the AI chip race. It is a genuine force reshaping the data center landscape.
Morgan Stanley is paying attention. The bank raised its price target on AMD to $360 from $255, part of a broader round of semiconductor upgrades during earnings season. The call lands on the eve of AMD's first quarter 2026 earnings report on May 5 after market close, setting up one of the most closely watched prints in the tech sector this year.
This is the moment when the AI hardware story either accelerates or shows its first cracks.
Toward the end of April 2026, AMD CEO Lisa Su met with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to discuss artificial intelligence and U.S. technological leadership.
That conversation underscores just how central AMD has become to the national AI conversation.
Morgan Stanley raised AMD price target to $360 in broad semiconductor upgrade
Morgan Stanley's AMD upgrade didn't arrive alone. The bank also raised its targets on GlobalFoundries to $58 from $47, IonQ to $47 from $38, Microchip Technology to $92 from $69, and Navitas to $12.50 from $4.50, according to Seeking Alpha.
The upgrades reflect what Morgan Stanley sees as a market continuing to strengthen broadly. For AMD specifically, the $360 target represents a 41% increase from the prior $255 figure. That's actually a massive revision that signals real conviction, not a routine mark-to-market adjustment.
Related: Stifel resets AMD price target for rest of 2026
The bull case centers on AMD's data center momentum. Wall Street is modeling approximately $5.6 billion in data center revenue for the first quarter of 2026, Yahoo Finance confirms. That would represent 52% year-over-year growth. The Instinct MI series of AI GPUs is at the heart of that projection, with major hyperscalers deploying AMD accelerators at scale.
AMD also has a significant server CPU story running in parallel. The EPYC processor line continues to take share in data center workloads. That revenue stream is less volatile than GPU demand and provides a durable earnings foundation beneath the flashier AI hardware narrative.
What Wall Street expects from AMD's Q1 2026 earnings
The expectations heading into the print are substantial. According to analyst consensus, Q1 2026 projections include:
- Revenue of approximately $9.8 billion, in line with AMD's own guidance of $9.8 billion
- Adjusted EPS of $1.28 to $1.30, reflecting approximately 33% growth versus Q1 2025
- Non-GAAP gross margins expected to be near 55%
- Data center revenue of approximately $5.6 billion, up 52% year over year
Source: Yahoo Finance
Three things will determine how AMD's stock moves after the report.
- Whether data center revenue hits or exceeds the $5.6 billion target
- Whether management guides Q2 revenue above the $10.5 billion to $10.8 billion range that analysts are modeling
- Commentary on production timelines for the Instinct MI350 and MI450 GPUs (products that will define AMD's competitive position in the back half of 2026)
SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg via Getty Images
AMD's product roadmap, partnerships show why AI hardware race far from over
Beyond the earnings print, AMD is building a product and partnership portfolio that suggests the current momentum is structural rather than cyclical.
Meta has deployed AMD MI450 GPUs at a 6-gigawatt scale. Oracle has placed accelerator orders. Zyphra recently launched a new AI cloud platform powered by AMD Instinct MI355X GPUs. These aren't pilot programs. They are large-scale commitments from the biggest names in enterprise AI infrastructure.
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On the product side, AMD launched the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition Processor, the first dual processor with 3D V Cache technology. The company is expanding its AI PC presence through the Ryzen AI Max series, which enables on-device agent computing.
And AMD announced its flagship "Advancing AI 2026" event for July 23 in San Francisco. That signals the company intends to command the AI narrative well into the second half of the year.
Data-center revenue is projected to grow more than 60% for full year 2026, according to analyst estimates. The average Bank of America price target on AMD is at $310, according to TheStreet. That's below Morgan Stanley's newly raised $360 target, suggesting the bank is out ahead of consensus on the AMD story.
AMD closed May 4 slightly down $19.00 to $341.54, but was trading up $7.75 in premarket on May 5, earnings day. The earnings report will determine which direction matters more.
Related: Bank of America revamps AMD stock price target
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This story was originally published May 5, 2026 at 10:23 AM.