NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA) has dominated the first leg of the AI chip boom. Now, BofA Securities sees a $210 billion opportunity in a different type of chip: CPUs. CPUs help coordinate and manage the work inside servers, while GPUs handle the heavy calculations behind AI models.
As AI evolves from answering questions to performing tasks autonomously, BofA Securities expects CPUs to take on a much bigger role in the coming years.
That could create a massive new market for Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NASDAQ: AMD), Intel Corp. (NASDAQ :INTC) and Arm Holdings plc (NASDAQ: ARM).
BofA Securities expects server CPU revenue to rise from $61.4 billion in 2026 to $210.6 billion by 2030.
That is close to five times the roughly $35 billion the server CPU market was worth in 2025.
Why AI Agents Could Change The CPU Market
The important distinction is between today's AI models and tomorrow's AI agents.
In a traditional server, the CPU is the main coordinator. It manages the operating system, applications, databases, storage and network connections.
AI servers work differently. GPUs perform most of the intensive AI calculations, but CPUs still coordinate the system.
They feed data to GPUs, manage connections and prepare workloads.
The next step is the agentic server.
AI agents can perform multi-step tasks without waiting for a human to give them every instruction. In this architecture, BofA Securities sees the CPU becoming an orchestration layer.
According to BofA Securities semiconductor analyst Vivek Arya, that could change the balance between CPUs and GPUs inside AI data centers.
The CPU Market Could Nearly Quadruple
BofA Securities has raised its 2030 server CPU market estimate to $210.6 billion, from about $170 billion previously.
That would represent a roughly 36% compound annual growth rate from 2026 through 2030.
The bank estimates CPUs could account for about 10% of the total data-center systems market by 2030, versus roughly 7% during the 2024-2025 training era.
Inside that $210 billion, the bank splits the market three ways.
Traditional cloud and on-premise CPUs account for about $30 billion. AI cluster and head-node CPUs, which supervise racks of accelerators, account for about $90 billion.
A third bucket worth about $90 billion did not meaningfully exist two years ago: standalone processors running AI agents.
The key is that CPUs are additive to GPUs, rather than replacing them. That's because agentic workloads layer new CPU-dense infrastructure alongside existing accelerator clusters instead of replacing them.
BofA Securities expects the CPU-to-GPU ratio to move from roughly 1:4 during the AI training era toward 1:2 for inference and eventually close to 1:1 as agentic AI expands.
In other words, the AI boom could require more CPUs precisely because it requires more GPUs.
Since the start of the year, the three major CPU producers have seen their stocks rally by triple digits.
Company2026 YTD %
- Intel+173.6%
- Arm Holdings+148.7%
- Advanced Micro Devices+125.5%
The market-share forecast is where the story becomes particularly interesting.
BofA Securities expects Intel's share of overall server CPU revenue to fall from roughly 34% in 2026 to 22% in 2030.
Advanced Micro Devices is expected to remain relatively stable, moving from about 28% to 31%.
ARM is the major share winner. BofA Securities expects ARM-based CPUs to represent 47% of server CPU value by 2030, including roughly 38% from merchant products and 9% from custom designs.
The merchant opportunity includes new products such as Nvidia's Vera CPUs and Qualcomm solutions. The custom opportunity includes hyperscaler chips such as Amazon's Graviton, Google's Axion and Microsoft's Cobalt.
That does not mean ARM captures all the economics. Much of the value can accrue to companies licensing its architecture or building chips around it.
AMD, by contrast, sells the chip and keeps the margin.
Why AMD Still Matters
Despite ARM's share gains, BofA Securities names AMD its "top CPU pick."
"AMD remains our top CPU pick on its wide breadth of portfolio and dual leadership - highest‑frequency (compute/head node rack) and highest core/thread count (agentic AI)," Arya said.
The bank expects AMD to remain strong in high-end AI server workloads, helped by its core-count advantage.
Arya points to breadth of portfolio and a core-count lead at the top end, where agentic workloads live: AMD's Zen 6 Venice is specified at up to 256 cores, against 192 for Intel's Diamond Rapids and 88 for Nvidia's Vera.
The investment takeaway is simple: the AI infrastructure boom may be creating a second chip market alongside GPUs.
What Wall Street Says on AMD
According to Benzinga Analyst Ratings, AMD carries a consensus Buy rating and an average price target of $550.86, roughly 12% above a recent $493.38. The range runs from $248 to $730.
Most of the recent moves clustered around second-quarter earnings.
Date | FirmPrice | TargetAction | Rating
Aug. 6, 2026Argus Research$450 → $625MaintainsBuy
Aug. 6, 2026Rosenblatt$665 → $700MaintainsBuy
Aug. 5, 2026Wells Fargo$615 → $700MaintainsOverweight
Aug. 5, 2026Truist Securities$478 → $594MaintainsBuy
Aug. 5, 2026JP Morgan$385 → $550MaintainsNeutral
Aug. 5, 2026Morgan Stanley$410 → $465MaintainsEqual-Weight
Source: Benzinga Analyst Ratings