AMD Executives Cashing Out Shares Worth Billions Amid AI Rally

Mark D. Papermaster, AMD’s Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President, exercised stock options on April 15 and 16 to acquire common shares, then sold a portion of them. On April 24, under a pre-established Rule 10b5-1 trading plan, he sold tens of thousands more shares. After these transactions, he still directly holds approximately 1.26 million shares—valued at about $349 million.

During the same period, Paul Darren Grasby, AMD’s Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, sold 24,376 shares on May 8 at an average price of $444.39, cashing out roughly $10.8 million. He nonetheless retains over 100,000 shares, maintaining a significant ownership stake.

In its first quarter 2026 financial results announced on May 5, AMD reported revenue of $10.3 billion—a 38% year-over-year increase—and issued second-quarter guidance of $11.2 billion ± $0.3 billion, underscoring strong demand for data-center and AI chips. The company’s share price has surged in response.

Alongside rising AI semiconductor demand, AMD continues to secure major AI infrastructure contracts, including an expanded strategic partnership with Meta to deploy up to 6 GW of AMD Instinct GPUs.

Headquartered in the U.S. as a fabless semiconductor company, AMD competes with NVIDIA in the data-center and AI-chip markets with its EPYC server processors and Instinct series AI accelerators.

Papermaster and Grasby, who lead AMD’s technology strategy and oversee security and risk respectively, are recognized as key decision-makers in the company’s AI- and data-center-focused business transformation.