AMD and Arm gain server CPU share as Intel slips

Thursday 14 May 2026 - 16:00

By: Dakir Madiha

AMD and Arm gain server CPU share as Intel slips

AMD and Arm have continued to take market share from Intel in the server processor segment in early 2026, as artificial intelligence driven data center demand accelerates structural shifts in global chip spending. A new analysis from UBS shows that competitive dynamics in the CPU market are changing faster than traditional seasonal patterns, with both volume and revenue shares moving away from Intel’s long standing dominance.

Global server CPU shipments rose around 6 percent quarter on quarter and about 19 percent year on year in the first quarter of 2026, significantly outperforming typical seasonal expectations of a 7 percent decline. Within that growth, Intel’s share of unit shipments fell to 54.9 percent, down by 370 basis points. AMD increased its share to 27.4 percent, while Arm based processors reached 17.7 percent, reflecting stronger adoption across cloud infrastructure and hyperscale data centers.

Revenue trends showed an even sharper shift. Intel’s share of x86 server revenue dropped to 53.8 percent, while AMD’s EPYC processors reached 46.2 percent of the x86 server revenue segment, marking a record level for the company. AMD also reported more than 50 percent year on year growth in its server CPU sales during the quarter, driven by demand from enterprise customers and cloud providers expanding compute capacity for AI workloads.

The data center segment has become the central battleground for CPU vendors as AI applications reshape infrastructure requirements. AMD reported 5.8 billion dollars in data center revenue in the first quarter, a 57 percent annual increase, surpassing Intel’s data center and AI segment revenue of 5.1 billion dollars for the same period. Analysts noted this marks a structural inflection point in which AMD overtakes Intel in quarterly data center revenue.

Long term projections indicate continued expansion in the server CPU market. AMD has raised its growth outlook to more than 35 percent annually through 2030, while UBS estimates the total addressable market could rise from 30 billion dollars in 2025 to 170 billion dollars by 2030, driven by AI intensive workloads requiring significantly higher core counts. Arm is also expanding rapidly, with expectations that its architecture could reach up to 45 percent market share in servers by 2030, supported by large scale deployments from major cloud providers.