Agentic AI compute reshapes cloud economics as AMD targets surging CPU demand

Agentic AI compute reshapes cloud economics as AMD targets surging CPU demand Agentic AI compute has become the defining workload of the cloud’s next era, reshaping how hyperscalers, neoclouds and enterprises architect their infrastructure. As autonomous agents move into production, demand for both GPUs and high-core-count CPUs is surging — and the economics of cloud computing are being rewritten in real time. The shift echoes the cloud’s own explosive rise, but at a far faster pace. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. is positioning itself at the center of the shift with an open, full-stack approach designed to convert its cloud momentum into a durable advantage, according to Steve Berg (pictured), corporate vice president and general manager of the server CPU Cloud Business Group at AMD. “It’s really been phenomenal to see what’s happened over even just the last — it’s not even 18 months that the agentic AI world has existed,” Berg said. “I’ve been doing this in the cloud for about 15 years, and watching the explosion that’s happening is amazing. The CPU is becoming much more relevant again — actually probably the most relevant element of the infrastructure in the agentic AI era today.” Berg spoke with theCUBE’s John Furrier and Dave Vellante at AMD Advancing AI 2026, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how agentic AI compute is driving demand across cloud and hybrid infrastructure, AMD’s cloud market gains and the road to its next-generation EPYC “Venice” processors. (* Disclosure below.) Agentic AI compute drives a heterogeneous hardware era AMD’s rise in the cloud has been years in the making, built on a steady cadence of server chips that captured design wins from major providers. The company is targeting nearly 50% of the cloud CPU market on a revenue basis by year’s end, a goal it expects to reach through favorable total cost of ownership rather than raw specifications, Berg noted. “The products have led to being able to win in the cloud world,” Berg said. “It’s a TCO play. It’s always a TCO play when it comes to cloud. And ensuring that they have the right performance per dollar for their workloads is how we’ve been able to become dominant in the cloud.” That openness has helped AMD gain share even as hyperscalers design their own silicon. Enterprises want software compatibility across cloud, hybrid and on-premises environments without becoming locked into a single provider, Berg explained. “It’s the enterprises that run in the cloud that want to have that open ecosystem, and they don’t want the lock-in,” he said. “They want to be able to run the same software and ecosystem that they do on-prem in a hybrid environment as they do in the cloud.” The agentic era is fueling demand for a range of CPU configurations tailored to storage, high-performance computing and inference workloads, rather than a single processor for every use case, Berg noted. Those CPUs also handle orchestration, data routing and pre- and post-processing to keep expensive GPUs supplied with work. AMD’s forthcoming EPYC Venice processor, with up to 256 cores and a claimed 1.7-fold performance improvement, is built for these task-driven workloads, even as a tight memory market remains the biggest constraint on how fast the company can ship. “Venice will be the best EPYC, will be the best agentic processor on the planet,” Berg said. “And I think everyone’s going to put it into their infrastructure to run agentic workloads.” Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AMD Advancing AI 2026: (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the AMD Advancing AI event. Neither AMD, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.) Photo: SiliconANGLE A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE: Support our mission to keep content open and free by engaging with theCUBE community. 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