AMD CEO: Crypto Mining Is 'A Small Part' Of Business, Shouldn't Be A Focus Going Forward

Crypto mining isn’t a market that Advanced Micro Devices, Inc AMD feels strongly about, says CEO Lisa Su.

What Happened: According to a report from The Verge, Su downplayed the impact of crypto on AMD’s business at the 2021 Code Conference earlier this week.

Su reportedly told the audience that crypto was “a rather small part” of AMD’s business when asked how important crypto's role was in the chipmaker’s operations.

She also went on to call crypto “a pretty volatile space” and said it “shouldn’t be a focus” for the company going forward.

“We are trying really hard to get more products to gamers,” she said, emphasizing that gamers continue to be AMD’s primary target market.

Why It Matters: The boom in crypto mining this year had some unintended consequences for gamers and chip manufacturers like AMD and NVIDIA Corporation NVDA. Crypto miners snapped up the majority of chips, resulting in a massive shortage of GPUs worldwide.

Some GPU manufacturers, like NVIDIA, introduced a hash rate limiter as a measure to control the use of its RTX 3060 chip in crypto mining.

Unlike Nvidia, AMD did not impose any such restrictions on its products.

“We will not be blocking any workload, not just mining for that matter,” said Nish Neelalojanan, product manager at AMD, earlier this year.

Price Action: AMD shares were trading 0.7% higher at $102.23 Wednesday morning.

Photo by Zii Miller on Unsplash