AMD chases Nvidia with $14 billion in leased computing watts, emphasizing power-delivery over raw chip performance.

AMD has secured over $14 billion in 15-year data center leases with Core Scientific to power the Helios AI racks it will begin shipping this year.

Core Scientific announced the agreements on July 28 alongside second-quarter results showing colocation revenue of $136.7 million, up 76% from the prior quarter.

AMD will lease approximately 377 megawatts directly at facilities in Pecos and Hunt County, Texas, and Muskogee, Oklahoma. An additional 152 megawatts at Auburn, Alabama, and Dalton, Georgia will serve an unnamed cloud tenant, with AMD providing credit support for the entire 15-year term.

As part of the deal, AMD received a warrant to purchase up to 30 million Core Scientific shares at $23.47, with approximately 6.5 million vesting upon the first lease closing. Power will reach the Pecos location in the first half of 2027, with the remaining facilities coming online through 2028. AMD also holds exclusive rights to reserve an additional 1,925 megawatts through the end of 2028.

Core Scientific Chief Executive Adam Sullivan characterized the arrangement as a "one-of-one type partnership" on the company's earnings call. Analysts at Needham maintained a buy rating with a $29 price target, describing the leases as an attractive expansion opportunity. The agreements will roughly double Core Scientific's contracted AI capacity to approximately 1.1 gigawatts and push its booked revenue past $24 billion.

AMD unveiled the Helios rack system in July, featuring 72 Instinct MI455X accelerators, sixth-generation EPYC processors, and 31 terabytes of HBM4 memory, built on open Ethernet standards.

CEO Lisa Su has positioned the system as an inference alternative offering greater memory capacity than competing designs. Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, Oracle, and Anthropic have already joined the buyer list, with shipments beginning in the second half of this year.

The leases come amid an intense AI infrastructure buildout. Nvidia's data center unit reported $75.2 billion for its April-ending quarter, up 92% year-over-year, while AMD posted $5.8 billion for its March quarter, a 57% increase, with guidance of approximately $11.2 billion in total sales for the period ending August 4.

The Core Scientific arrangement follows months of accumulating commitments. OpenAI agreed to a six-gigawatt multigenerational supply deal, Meta signed a six-gigawatt custom GPU arrangement, and Oracle plans to deploy 50,000 MI450 accelerators beginning this quarter. On July 22, Anthropic committed to as much as two gigawatts of the same accelerators, and AMD agreed to invest up to $5 billion in the company.