AMD Is Up 187% This Year and Nvidia Is Up 22%. Prediction: Nvidia Wins the Next 12 Months.

Key Points AMD closed Monday, Sept. 21, with a market value over $1 trillion for the first time, capping off a 187% rise in 2026. Nvidia expects fiscal 2028 revenue to grow about 70%, an outlook management says is constrained by supply, not demand. AMD costs about 40 times its 2027 consensus earnings estimate, and Nvidia costs about 15 times its fiscal 2028 estimate. 10 stocks we like better than Advanced Micro Devices › Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) closed Monday, Sept. 21, with a market value above $1 trillion for the first time, making it the fourth U.S. chipmaker to clear that threshold. The stock surged almost 10% that day alone as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosted chip stocks broadly, taking its 2026 gain to 187% as of this writing. Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) has had a solid year by most measures, up about 22% in 2026. Its stock has not closed at a record since mid-May, though. That gap is striking given that Nvidia is more than five times AMD's size and, currently, the faster-growing of the two. Missed AI’s "Act 1"? Act 2 Could Be 15x Bigger. Most investors think they missed the AI boat because they didn't buy Nvidia in 2005. But according to our analysts, we’re only at the end of "Act 1"—the R&D phase. "Act 2" is the global rollout. Continue » Both stocks now come with high expectations. The difference, I'd say, is in how much each price requires the company to prove over the next year. Here's why I expect Nvidia stock to beat AMD over the next 12 months. Image source: The Motley Fool. Nvidia's next year is largely guided Nvidia's fiscal 2027 second quarter (ended July 26) was another exceptional one. Revenue grew 106% year over year to $96.2 billion, an acceleration from the previous quarter, and the data center business contributed all but about $7 billion of the total. Profit kept up. Net income rose 126% year over year, to $59.7 billion. And management guided for another step up in this quarter (fiscal Q3): $108.0 billion of revenue. On the company's earnings call in late August, chief financial officer Colette Kress went a whole year further. "We expect to grow revenue by approximately 70% in fiscal 2028," Kress said. "This is a supply-constrained outlook." Put another way, the cap on next year's growth is how many chips Nvidia can get made, not how many customers want them. And CEO Jensen Huang told analysts demand without that constraint "would be a lot higher." At Monday's close of $227.38, shares trade at about 15 times what the company is expected to earn in fiscal 2028, the year that outlook applies to. That price, in my view, does not require believing much more than what management has already put on the record. AMD's next year is already in the price AMD's rally has real results behind it. Revenue for the second quarter of 2026 hit a record $11.5 billion, up 50% from a year ago. And the data center segment, which sells EPYC server processors and Instinct graphics processing units into the same AI build-out Nvidia serves, more than doubled year over year, totaling $6.7 billion (58% of the company's revenue). Management expects more from here. Guidance for the third quarter of 2026 is around $13 billion, which implies about 41% year-over-year growth. And CEO Lisa Su told analysts on the company's August earnings call that the bigger move happens next year. "[W]e now expect data center segment revenue to more than double year-over-year in 2027," Su said. The problem is what that outlook now costs. At Monday's closing price of $615.52, the stock trades at about 40 times expected 2027 earnings -- and those estimates already call for earnings roughly doubling next year. The run has been quick, too. Shares climbed about 22% in the four trading days through Monday's close, roughly equaling what Nvidia's stock has gained all year. Which stock wins the next 12 months? Buying AMD today means paying about 40 times 2027's projected earnings for a plan management has set out but not yet executed. It also means betting the market will pay up once more a year from now for whatever 2028 is expected to hold. After a 187% run, that's a lot of ongoing enthusiasm to rely on. Buying Nvidia, at about 15 times the consensus estimate for fiscal 2028, means paying for growth management describes as limited only by supply. If the company just delivers the year it's guided for, today's price doesn't look demanding. Sure, momentum could keep carrying AMD. Su said customer pull for the company's new Helios AI systems is "very strong and tracking ahead of our initial forecast," and estimates could keep rising. Of course, a sharp decline in AI spending would take both stocks down, expensive or not -- and the more expensive one arguably has further to fall. In the end, I expect Nvidia stock to do better than AMD over the next 12 months. Both companies are executing about as well as investors could ask. But Nvidia's price leaves much more room for ordinary disappointment. Between the two, Nvidia is the one I'd buy today. If AMD's data center revenue doubles again in 2027 while the stock cools down, I'd take another look at the comparison. Should you buy stock in Advanced Micro Devices right now? Before you buy stock in Advanced Micro Devices, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Advanced Micro Devices wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $389,154 !* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,406,303 !* Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 949 % — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 214% for the S&P 500. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor , and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of September 23, 2026. Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy .

AMD closed Monday, Sept. 21, with a market value over $1 trillion for the first time, capping off a 187% rise in 2026.

Nvidia expects fiscal 2028 revenue to grow about 70%, an outlook management says is constrained by supply, not demand.

AMD costs about 40 times its 2027 consensus earnings estimate, and Nvidia costs about 15 times its fiscal 2028 estimate.

Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) closed Monday, Sept. 21, with a market value above $1 trillion for the first time, making it the fourth U.S. chipmaker to clear that threshold. The stock surged almost 10% that day alone as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosted chip stocks broadly, taking its 2026 gain to 187% as of this writing.

Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) has had a solid year by most measures, up about 22% in 2026. Its stock has not closed at a record since mid-May, though. That gap is striking given that Nvidia is more than five times AMD's size and, currently, the faster-growing of the two.

Missed AI’s "Act 1"? Act 2 Could Be 15x Bigger. Most investors think they missed the AI boat because they didn't buy Nvidia in 2005. But according to our analysts, we’re only at the end of "Act 1"—the R&D phase. "Act 2" is the global rollout. Continue »

Both stocks now come with high expectations. The difference, I'd say, is in how much each price requires the company to prove over the next year. Here's why I expect Nvidia stock to beat AMD over the next 12 months.