AMD Stock Rises Premarket Today as Samsung Partnership Expands

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) shares are climbing in premarket trading on Wednesday, March 18, 2026, after the chipmaker and South Korean technology giant Samsung Electronics announced a sweeping memorandum of understanding to deepen their strategic collaboration on next-generation memory chip supplies for artificial intelligence infrastructure. The deal, which covers both high-bandwidth memory and DDR5 solutions, comes at a pivotal moment for AMD as it races to secure supply chain advantages amid surging AI demand and intense competition from Nvidia. The partnership underscores a broader industry trend of chipmakers locking in long-term memory supply agreements as AI-driven workloads continue to reshape the global semiconductor landscape.

AMD and Samsung Deepen AI Memory Alliance

Samsung and AMD have signed a Memorandum of Understanding aligning Samsung as the primary HBM4 supplier for AMD’s upcoming Instinct MI455X AI accelerator GPU, while also covering advanced DDR5 memory solutions for AMD’s sixth-generation EPYC processors, codenamed Venice. The two companies noted that these technologies will underpin next-generation AI systems built around AMD Instinct GPUs, EPYC CPUs, and rack-scale architectures, including the AMD Helios platform.

AMD Chair and CEO Lisa Su highlighted the significance of the tie-up, stating the company is thrilled to expand its work with Samsung by combining Samsung’s memory leadership with AMD’s GPU, CPU, and rack-scale platforms.

Beyond memory, the agreement opens the door to a potential foundry partnership, under which Samsung could provide contract chip manufacturing services for future AMD products. This foundry discussion adds another dimension to the relationship and arrives in the same week that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced his own foundry partnership with Samsung at the company’s annual GTC developer conference.

The parallel deals illustrate Samsung’s aggressive push to position itself as a critical manufacturing and memory partner for the leading AI chip designers.

Samsung already serves as AMD’s primary HBM3E partner, supplying chips used in the existing Instinct MI350X and MI355X AI accelerators, meaning this new MoU represents a forward-looking extension of an already established and active supply relationship.

The expansion to HBM4 is particularly significant given the next generation of memory’s enhanced performance and energy efficiency, which AMD says will make the MI455X GPU an optimal solution for AI model training and inference workloads at scale.

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AMD Stock Brief: Premarket Gains and Key Metrics

AMD shares were trading at $198.95 in premarket as of 5:19 AM EDT on March 18, 2026, reflecting a gain of $2.64, or approximately 1.34%, following a regular session close of $196.31 on March 17. The stock had a relatively flat prior close of $196.58 and traded within a day’s range of $195.26 to $199.21 during the previous session, suggesting the Samsung MoU news is providing a meaningful catalyst heading into the open. Average daily volume stands at approximately 36.4 million shares, with the prior session seeing roughly 22 million shares change hands.

From a valuation perspective, AMD carries a market capitalization of approximately $320 billion with a trailing P/E ratio of 75.21 and a forward P/E of 29.33, reflecting elevated near-term earnings multiples that are expected to compress as AI-driven revenue growth accelerates.

The stock’s 52-week range spans from $76.48 to $267.08, and the consensus analyst price target sits at $290.27, implying meaningful upside from current levels. Revenue for the trailing twelve months stands at $34.64 billion, with Q4 FY25 revenue reaching $10.27 billion, demonstrating strong sequential growth momentum.

AMD’s longer-term performance has significantly outpaced the broader market, with a one-year return of approximately 87.69% compared to 18.34% for the S&P 500, and a five-year return of 137.58% against the index’s 69%. The company’s pipeline of large AI chip agreements also bolsters the bull case, including a reported deal to supply up to $60 billion worth of AI chips to Meta Platforms over five years and a similar arrangement with OpenAI.

With the Samsung partnership now adding supply chain depth to an already robust demand picture, analysts maintain a broadly constructive view, with price targets ranging from $220 to as high as $365.

Disclaimer: The author does not hold or have a position in any securities discussed in the article. All stock prices were quoted at the time of writing.