Taking place in San Francisco this week is AMD’s annual enterprise and AI-focused event, Advancing AI. Once one of a few differently yearly(ish) events spread across AMD’s different product segments, the rise of AMD’s fortunes in the data center market has meant that the AI-focused event is quickly becoming AMD’s marquee event of the year due to the importance of the products that get announced here.
AMD tells us that this is their biggest event yet; and with the show filling the entirety of the Moscone Center West, AMD does not need to exaggerate there. Driving the major turnout is a few different elements, the first of which being that AMD has turned what was previously a press conference into a full blown trade show with developer sessions, product booths, and more. The event has effectively turned into AMD’s equivalent to NVIDIA’s GTC – just 60 miles down the road.
AMD Advancing AI 2026 Keynote Preview #
But like GTC itself, the prime event is the keynote speech, where AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su will be revealing a suite of data center and AI product announcements for the company. AMD, for its part, has not been shy about laying out its plans for 2026, so we have a solid idea of what to expect from the keynote.
The big news year? AMD’s first rackscale system, Helios, and all the chips that will go in it. Previously teased by AMD at last year’s event, Helios is the fusion of AMD’s MI455X GPUs, EPYC “Venice” CPUs, and Pensando DPUs, with a complete system fitting into a single rack and employing a speedy scale-up networking architecture to allow the rack to function as a single machine. The rack is AMD’s answer to NVIDIA’s NVL72 racks, and while it has technically not even been fully detailed yet, AMD has already publicly lined up customers for the system, including perennial partner Microsoft.
To that end, we are expecting much of the 2 hour keynote to focus on Helios and the components of it, with Su and her lieutenants delivering new details on the MI455X GPUs, the EPYC “Venice” CPUs, the Pensando DPUs, and the latest iteration of AMD’s ROCm software stack. Any one of those would be significant news on their own, but from AMD’s perspective they are all meant to work together and are going to be presented together as such.
Besides promoting Helios, we expect today’s keynote to also solidify when the various components of the system will go into volume production and when the first racks will ship. To date AMD has said that they will ship in the later part of 2026, but they have not said anything beyond that. Hopefully we will also get a refreshed roadmap for future AMD chips and racks beyond Helios, though AMD may opt to keep their focus on the near future here as opposed to last year’s future-centric showcase.
And, of course, we are keeping our eyes peeled for any surprise announcements from AMD.
The Advancing AI 2026 keynote kicks off at 9:30am PT/12:30pm ET/16:30 UTC. Please come join us here at ServeTheHome for our live blog coverage of the keynote.
As always, we suggest opening the keynote in its own browser, tab, or app for the best viewing experience.