Lisa Su

Based on Wikipedia: Lisa Su

When Lisa Su took over as CEO of Advanced Micro Devices in October 2014, the company was worth roughly three billion dollars and widely considered to be on life support. Intel dominated the processor market so thoroughly that many analysts wondered if AMD would survive at all. A decade later, AMD's market capitalization had soared past two hundred billion dollars, and for the first time in the company's history, it surpassed Intel in total value. Su had engineered one of the most remarkable corporate turnarounds in technology history.

But here's the detail that makes her story even more extraordinary: the CEO of AMD's chief rival, Nvidia's Jensen Huang, is her cousin. Their mothers are first cousins, descended from the same grandfather in Taiwan. Two of the most powerful figures in the global semiconductor industry share a family tree.

From Tainan to the Bronx

Lisa Tzwu-Fang Su was born in November 1969 in Tainan, a city on Taiwan's southwestern coast. Her family spoke Taiwanese Hokkien at home. When she was three years old, her parents—Su Chun-hwai, who would become a statistician for the New York City government, and Sandy Lo, an accountant who later became an entrepreneur—immigrated to the United States and settled in Queens.

Her parents pushed both Lisa and her brother toward math and science from an early age. When Lisa was seven, her father started drilling her on multiplication tables. Her mother introduced her to business concepts. This combination of technical rigor and commercial thinking would prove prophetic.

Su knew she wanted to be an engineer before she knew exactly what that meant. "I just had a great curiosity about how things worked," she later recalled. At ten, she started taking apart her brother's remote control cars and then fixing them—a hands-on debugging process that would become central to her engineering philosophy. In junior high, she got her first computer: an Apple II, the machine that launched a thousand Silicon Valley careers.

She attended the Bronx High School of Science, one of New York City's elite specialized high schools, graduating in 1986.

The Most Difficult Major

That fall, Su enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She planned to major in either electrical engineering or computer science. She chose electrical engineering because, as she put it, "it seemed like the most difficult major." This wasn't masochism—it was strategic. Su wanted the foundational knowledge that would be hardest to acquire later.

During her freshman year, she joined MIT's Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program and found herself manufacturing test silicon wafers for graduate students. This grunt work ignited something. Combined with summer jobs at Analog Devices, a semiconductor company, it focused her ambition on one of the most challenging and consequential materials ever engineered: silicon chips.

Silicon itself is remarkable. It's the second most abundant element in the Earth's crust after oxygen, found in everything from beach sand to quartz crystals. But its true value lies in being a semiconductor—a material that conducts electricity under some conditions but not others. By carefully controlling tiny regions of silicon and layering them into intricate patterns, engineers can create transistors, the fundamental switches that underpin all modern computing. When you hear about a chip containing billions of transistors, each one is a microscopic structure carved into silicon.

Su earned her bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, then stayed at MIT for her master's, which she completed in 1991. She continued into a doctoral program, studying under professors Dimitri Antoniadis and James Chung.

Her PhD research focused on something called silicon-on-insulator technology, or SOI. The basic idea sounds simple but was fiendishly difficult to implement. Traditional transistors are built directly on a silicon wafer, but Su and other researchers were exploring what happened when you placed a thin layer of insulating material beneath the transistors. This extra layer reduced unwanted electrical interference and allowed the transistors to switch faster while consuming less power.

At the time, SOI was considered an unproven, possibly impractical technique. Today, it's a mainstream manufacturing approach used in everything from smartphones to supercomputers. Su was there at the beginning.

Her 1994 dissertation bore a daunting title: "Extreme-submicrometer silicon-on-insulator (SOI) MOSFETs." (MOSFET stands for metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor, the dominant type of transistor in modern electronics.) She had earned three degrees from MIT and published technical research that would help shape the future of chip manufacturing.

Solving Problems That Weren't Hers

Su's first job after MIT was at Texas Instruments, where she worked in the Semiconductor Process and Device Center. But within a year, IBM recruited her as a research staff member specializing in device physics.

IBM was then one of the giants of the technology industry, running enormous research laboratories that tackled fundamental problems in computing. It was at IBM that Su developed a reputation for something that would define her career: migrating to wherever the hardest problems were, regardless of whether they fell within her official specialty.

The most significant of these problems was copper.

For decades, chip manufacturers had used aluminum to create the microscopic wires connecting transistors on a chip. Aluminum was well understood and relatively easy to work with. But as transistors shrank and chips grew more complex, aluminum's limitations became critical. It was more resistant to electrical current than copper, generating more heat and wasting more energy. If the industry could switch to copper, chips would be faster and more efficient.

The problem was that copper is a contaminant. When copper atoms drift into silicon, they can destroy a chip's functionality. Getting copper to play nicely with semiconductor manufacturing required solving an intricate puzzle involving chemistry, physics, and industrial processes.

Su played what IBM called a "critical role" in developing the recipe. "My specialty was not in copper," she explained, "but I migrated to where the problems were." The technology launched in 1998, establishing new industry standards and producing chips up to twenty percent faster than their aluminum predecessors.

An Internal Startup

In 2000, IBM's CEO Lou Gerstner gave Su a year-long assignment as his technical assistant—an executive education program that put promising leaders next to the company's ultimate decision-maker. Afterward, she took on a peculiar new role: director of emerging projects.

"I was basically director of myself—there was no one else in the group," she said. She was given the freedom to run what was essentially a startup inside IBM. She hired ten employees and focused on biochips (devices that integrate biological materials with electronics), low-power semiconductors, and broadband chips. Their first product was a microprocessor that extended battery life in phones and handheld devices.

In 2001, MIT Technology Review named her a "Top Innovator Under 35."

Her internal startup also led to one of the most ambitious collaborations in gaming history. IBM partnered with Sony and Toshiba to develop next-generation processors, with Ken Kutaragi—the legendary Sony engineer known as the father of the PlayStation—demanding performance improvements of a thousand times over existing chips.

That sounds impossible. It wasn't hyperbole.

Su's team helped develop the architecture that became the Cell microprocessor, a radical design featuring nine processing cores that could work in parallel. The Cell powered the PlayStation 3 and also found its way into supercomputers, where its raw computational muscle earned records for performance. The project taught Su how to coordinate massive, multi-company engineering efforts—experience that would prove invaluable later.

Learning Turnarounds

In 2007, Su left IBM after thirteen years to become chief technology officer at Freescale Semiconductor. Freescale had been spun off from Motorola and was struggling to find its footing. Su ran research and development, then took on a broader role as senior vice president of the networking and multimedia group, responsible for strategy, marketing, and engineering.

At Freescale, she learned something different: how to help a troubled company get "its house in order," as the trade publication EE Times put it. When Freescale filed for an initial public offering in 2011, industry observers credited Su's leadership of the networking business as a key factor.

The AMD Challenge

In January 2012, Su joined AMD as senior vice president and general manager, overseeing global business units. The company was in dire condition. Intel controlled the overwhelming majority of the personal computer processor market, and AMD's previous attempts to compete had resulted in financial losses and strategic confusion.

Su immediately pushed for diversification. The personal computer market was mature and Intel-dominated; AMD needed to find places where it could win. She helped negotiate deals to put AMD chips inside the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 game consoles—significant wins that provided steady revenue and kept AMD's factories running at volume.

When she took over, about ten percent of AMD's sales came from non-PC products. Within three years, that figure had reached forty percent.

On October 8, 2014, AMD's board named Su president and CEO, replacing Rory Read. She was forty-four years old.

The Zen Turnaround

Su's strategy had three pillars: invest in the right technology, streamline the product line, and continue diversifying away from PCs. The most important technology bet was a new processor architecture called Zen.

For years, AMD's processors had been engineering compromises—adequate for budget buyers but uncompetitive with Intel's best. Zen aimed to change that fundamentally. The architecture was designed from the ground up to be competitive at the high end of the market while scaling efficiently across laptops, desktops, and servers.

In 2016, Su announced that AMD was developing a new generation of chips using FinFET manufacturing—a technique where transistors are built as three-dimensional structures rather than flat surfaces, allowing more transistors to fit in the same space while using less power. (The "Fin" refers to the fin-like shape of these 3D transistors.)

When Zen-based processors began shipping in 2017 under the Ryzen brand, the results exceeded expectations. Tech reviewers praised the chips for offering more processing threads—the ability to handle more simultaneous tasks—at dramatically lower prices than Intel's comparable products. AMD's share of the processor market jumped to nearly eleven percent.

The Ryzen Threadripper line, aimed at professional workstations and high-performance computing, established AMD as the performance leader in segments where Intel had reigned for years. Suddenly, enthusiasts and professionals were seriously considering AMD chips, sometimes preferring them.

AMD's stock price responded. When Su became CEO, shares traded around two to three dollars. By 2020, they had climbed past ninety dollars—a roughly thirtyfold increase.

Acquisitions and Growth

In February 2022, AMD completed a forty-nine billion dollar acquisition of Xilinx, a company specializing in field-programmable gate arrays, or FPGAs. Unlike traditional chips, which are designed once and manufactured with fixed functionality, FPGAs can be reprogrammed after manufacturing to perform different tasks. They're used in telecommunications, aerospace, medical devices, and increasingly in data centers and artificial intelligence applications.

The Xilinx acquisition gave AMD access to a different kind of computing technology and an established position in markets where it had been absent. Su became chair of the combined company, adding to her roles as president and CEO.

By 2024, AMD had overtaken Intel in market capitalization—a milestone that would have seemed laughable a decade earlier. The company once dismissed as a perpetual also-ran had become the market's preferred bet on the future of computing.

Recognition and Records

The accolades accumulated. In 2019, Su became the first woman ever to top the Associated Press's annual survey of CEO compensation, with her pay package valued at $58.5 million, mostly in stock awards tied to AMD's performance. The same year, she was named the highest-paid CEO among all companies in the S&P 500 index.

In 2021, she received the IEEE Robert N. Noyce Medal, the semiconductor industry's highest honor, named after the co-inventor of the integrated circuit. She was the first woman to receive it. That same year, President Biden appointed her to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Time magazine named her CEO of the Year in 2024—she had also received that honor a decade earlier, becoming the first woman to earn it. In 2025, Forbes ranked her the tenth most powerful woman in the world, and Time named her one of the "Architects of AI" for its Person of the Year issue.

MIT honored her by naming Building 12, dedicated to nanotechnology research, after her.

The Engineer's Approach

Su's leadership style reflects her engineering background. She focuses relentlessly on execution—getting products designed, manufactured, and shipped on schedule. She pushed AMD to think about customers' actual problems rather than abstract technological achievements. When she talks about strategy, it's in terms of "making the right technology investments" and "simplifying" operations.

Her personal habits reflect the discipline. After becoming CEO, she took up boxing, training regularly with a coach. It's a fitting metaphor for her career: systematic preparation, reading the opponent, and delivering precisely timed strikes.

She and her husband, Daniel Lin, live in Austin, Texas, home to AMD's operations and a growing hub of the semiconductor industry.

The Cousin Rivalry

The family connection between Su and Jensen Huang, Nvidia's co-founder and CEO, adds a remarkable dimension to the semiconductor industry's competitive landscape. Their companies compete directly in graphics processing units, or GPUs—chips originally designed to render video game graphics but now crucial for artificial intelligence and data center computing. Nvidia has dominated the AI chip market, but AMD is aggressively pursuing a larger share.

At family gatherings, two of the world's most powerful technology executives presumably discuss something other than chip architectures. But the competitive tension is real. When Nvidia announces a new AI processor, AMD's response matters. When AMD gains server market share, Nvidia feels the pressure.

It's an improbable Hollywood plot: two cousins from Taiwan, both immigrants to the United States, both brilliant engineers, now running rival semiconductor giants worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

What She Built

Lisa Su's tenure at AMD represents one of the great turnaround stories in corporate history. She took a company that many had written off and transformed it into a genuine competitor across personal computing, gaming, data centers, and now artificial intelligence.

The technical details matter: Zen architecture, FinFET manufacturing, the Xilinx acquisition, the console deals. But the broader lesson is about focus and execution. Su didn't try to beat Intel everywhere at once. She found niches where AMD could win, built credibility, and steadily expanded. She invested in fundamental technology rather than chasing short-term gains.

As of 2024, her net worth exceeded one billion dollars, earned through AMD stock that appreciated as she delivered results. The engineer who took apart remote control cars at ten years old now commands one of the most important companies in the global technology supply chain.

She is, by most measures, the most successful female CEO in the history of the semiconductor industry—an industry that literally builds the foundations of the modern world.