AMD Gains Momentum as Raymond James Upgrades to Strong Buy and Server‑CPU Forecast Surges

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) shares climbed as much as 5% on Tuesday, August 25, after Raymond James upgraded the stock to Strong Buy from Outperform and raised its price target to $641 from $565 . The new target implies roughly 40% upside from AMD's Monday closing price, according to Raymond James analyst Simon Leopold's own math.

The upgrade rests on Raymond James's forecast that the addressable server-CPU market will grow at a 44% five-year CAGR to roughly $201 billion by 2030. SentiSense's own analyst-consensus data shows Wall Street was already leaning bullish on AMD heading into the upgrade: 48 analysts carry a STRONG_BUY consensus rating with an average price target of $613.09, made up of 43 buy calls and 10 hold calls with zero sell ratings. Separately, Yahoo Finance reported that about 72% of analysts covering AMD already rated the stock Strong Buy or Buy before Tuesday's move.

The rally showed up across trading platforms throughout the day: TradingKey reported AMD opening up 3.82%, while Invezz, syndicated on TradingView, put the intraday gain at roughly 4% alongside a roughly 2% move in Intel shares, as the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose 1.4% and the 10-year Treasury yield eased to 4.658%. The move also followed AMD's Q2 2026 results, which beat expectations: non-GAAP earnings per share of $1.66 versus a $1.61 consensus, revenue up 50% year over year to $11.5 billion, and Data Center segment revenue that more than doubled to $6.7 billion. AMD's guidance calls for second-half 2026 server-CPU revenue to grow 80% year over year, and the company's expanding partnership with NVDA rival Anthropic, covering up to 2 gigawatts of Instinct MI450 GPUs and up to $5 billion in AMD investment, was cited as a deal that could be worth tens of billions of dollars over time.

Not every signal points the same direction. GuruFocus flagged AMD as trading 72.72% above its own "GF Value" estimate of $274.70, and TradingKey noted a forward price-to-earnings ratio exceeding 100x alongside sell-leaning readings on its MACD and Williams %R indicators, plus recent insider stock sales including a $7.2 million transaction by CEO Lisa Su, a reminder that valuation models and analyst price targets can diverge sharply after a rally like this one. Investors may want to watch whether AMD's server-CPU order momentum and the Anthropic partnership can convert Tuesday's optimism into sustained execution, particularly with Nvidia's own earnings due the following day.

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