New York, February 17, 2026, 04:59 EST — Premarket
- AMD shares ticked up 0.7% in premarket action following news of its India-targeted rack-scale AI initiative alongside TCS.
- The companies mapped out plans for as much as 200 megawatts of AI-ready capacity, all linked to what they’re calling “sovereign” deployments.
- Markets are back open after the U.S. holiday. Retail sales figures and the Fed minutes are both on deck this week.
Shares of Advanced Micro Devices gained 0.7% in premarket action Tuesday, putting the stock around $207.32 following the long U.S. holiday weekend.
AMD is back in the spotlight with this move, following a choppy kickoff to February. Investors have snapped up shares on any strong evidence of AI hardware demand—just as fast as they’ve dumped them at the slightest hint of a slowdown.
Markets are back from the holiday break, with chip stocks already jumping around as traders weigh AI spending bets and try to read the tea leaves on rate-cut timing. Concrete buildout details, particularly if they hint at near-term rollouts, usually get snapped up by investors in that early rush on Monday.
With U.S. exchanges shut down Monday for Washington’s Birthday, the trading week kicks off a day late. 1
AMD on Monday announced it’s deepening its partnership with Tata Consultancy Services, rolling out a 200-megawatt deployment of its “Helios” rack-scale AI setup in India and mapping out plans for AI-ready data centers. To put it in context, a megawatt measures power capacity—200 MW suggests a major buildout for training and running AI models. 2
Lisa Su, CEO, pointed to the move from AI “pilots to large-scale deployments,” saying it demands “a new blueprint for compute infrastructure.” K. Krithivasan, CEO of TCS, added that the project will support AMD’s inaugural “Helios”-powered AI infrastructure rollout in India. 2
The companies are basing the design on AMD’s Instinct MI455X GPUs—key hardware for AI training—paired with its next-gen EPYC “Venice” server CPUs, Pensando networking gear, and the ROCm software stack. TCS’ HyperVault unit will help develop the setup and is set to partner with hyperscalers and AI players for deployments in India. 2
Nvidia slipped roughly 2.2% ahead of the bell. Intel edged higher, up around 0.6%.
AMD continues its push to regain investor trust following a drop in its shares earlier this month, when a weaker sales forecast once again sparked doubts about how fast it can catch up to Nvidia in the market for data-center AI chips. 3
There’s a risk for AMD here: major infrastructure projects can get tripped up by permitting delays, power issues, or tight supply chains. Higher financing costs might also make customers space out their orders—especially if initial rollouts don’t deliver obvious productivity benefits.
Markets will be watching macro data this week. U.S. retail sales are set for release Tuesday, then Federal Reserve minutes land Wednesday. Other growth and manufacturing numbers drop later on. 4
Chip stocks have their eyes on Nvidia’s earnings coming up Feb. 25, a key indicator for data-center and AI spending in the industry. 5
Up next for AMD: the company is set to present at Morgan Stanley’s Technology, Media & Telecom conference on March 3. Traders will be tuning in for any fresh details on data-center AI deployment and the “Helios” launch. 6
