Lisa Su says AI is changing AMD’s hiring strategy – but not for the reason you might think
The chip giant is prioritizing recruitment of “AI forward” staff as demand for specialist roles skyrockets
AMD CEO Lisa Su has revealed AI is directly influencing recruitment practices at the chip maker but, unlike some tech firms, it’s led to increased headcount.
Speaking to CNBC at the CES 2026 conference in Las Vegas, Su said prospective hires with AI expertise and experience are now a priority as the company targets further gains in this sector.
“We’re growing very significantly as a company, so we actually are hiring lots of people,” Su said. The profile of these new recruits has changed, however, with the company hiring “people who are AI forward”.
Su added that the chip maker is now using AI to support development and testing of chips, which is having a tangible positive impact on workforce productivity and efficiency.
“I would say that AI is augmenting our capabilities,” she told CNBC. “It’s not replacing people, it’s actually just augmenting our productivity in terms of the number of products we can bring up at any given time.”
The AMD chief’s comments come in the wake of a year fraught with concerns about the impact of AI on the global labor market. Industry stakeholders have issued repeated warnings that the technology could adversely affect entry-level workers and long-term talent pipelines.
IT, customer support, and software development have all been touted as areas in which AI has the potential to take human jobs, with comments from major industry figures only intensifying concerns.
In early 2025, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff suggested the company may reduce hiring in software engineering as a result of gains made with its own in-house agentic AI service, Agentforce.
Elsewhere, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned AI could wipe out nearly half of all entry-level roles within five years.
AMD isn’t alone in AI hiring changes
AI is influencing hiring at enterprises globally, with the trend expected to continue in the coming years. This disruption might be more positive than some critics believe, however.
Analysis from Gartner in November 2025 predicted around 32 million jobs a year will be “reconfigured, redesigned, or fused” from 2028 onward.
The consultancy told ITPro at the time that a “jobs apocalypse” is unlikely with a long-term net positive gain on job creation anticipated.
Notably, a December survey of UK business leaders from project management company Monday seemed to back this prediction up, with more than three-quarters (78%) of respondents saying they don’t expect a drop in hiring across 2026.
Nearly one-third (32%) of respondents even said they expect to hire more staff this year as a result of their AI strategies.
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