AMD became the first woman-led company worth $1 trillion. Why it matters

Monday, September 28, 2026

Emma Hinchliffe

Most Powerful Women Editor

Profile

When AMD crossed a $1 trillion market cap, the company led by Lisa Su became the first woman-led business to reach the milestone.

Leon Neal/Getty Images

A week ago, AMD crossed a $1 trillion market cap for the first time. News coverage focused on the implications for the AI race: a surge in demand for chips and the impact of Meta’s launch of its AI agent Muse. AMD hit the milestone after a five-day rally that saw its share price climb 25%.

But reaching the trillion-dollar mark came with another achievement of note: AMD was the first company led by a female CEO to be worth more than $1 trillion. It joined a rarified club of just over a dozen companies, including Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, SpaceX, and Nvidia. Of all the companies on that list, only AMD is led by a female CEO, Lisa Su.

Oracle previously came close; while Safra Catz was in charge, its market cap peaked at around $925 billion last fall. (Today it’s down almost 60% from that high point.)

Su addressed the achievement during her appearance at Melania Trump’s Imperia summit last week. “It was a pretty darn good moment,” she said when Fox Business host Liz Claman noted that AMD was the first woman-led company to cross $1 trillion.

Su was No. 3 on the 2026 Fortune Most Powerful Women list earlier this year. She took over AMD 12 years ago and has become a visible player in Washington, often one of few women in the room in the White House’s gatherings of tech leaders.

Today, AMD has dropped back below the trillion-dollar mark as AI stocks fell this morning; its market cap is sitting at $984.4 billion.

And yet crossing the trillion-dollar mark is a remarkable achievement, whether or not AMD continues to straddle the border. Women have advanced so far in business, running 11% of the Fortune 500 and many of the world’s most influential companies and serving as key execs at other trillion-dollar businesses (ahem, SpaceX). Yet the very top echelon remains for the most part impenetrable.

By hitting $1 trillion, Su has officially put a measurable crack in one of the business world’s hardest glass ceilings.

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com

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