In an industry first, AMD has finally surpassed Intel in datacenter chips revenue, ending Intel’s dominance in what was once one of its strongest sectors.

Intel has traditionally been the dominant company in the server and data center market, even as AMD has chipped away at its lead on laptops and desktops. According to analyst Sravan Kundojjala, AMD has finally surpassed Intel in this critical segment.

As Kundojjala points out, Nviida has surpassed by companies, but only by a small margin. It’s still a shocking turn of events to seen Intel’s revenue for the sector drop so precipitously, but it underscores the challenges the company continues to face.

AMD has been taking high-profile clients away from Intel, thanks largely to the combination of performance and energy efficiency of the company’s chips, something Intel has struggled to match. Google Cloud is one such company, selecting AMD’s EPYC processors to power its Tau Virtual Machines (VMs) in mid-2021.

“At Google Cloud, our customers’ compute needs are evolving,” Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, said at the time. “By collaborating with AMD, Google Cloud customers can now leverage amazing performance for scale-out applications, with great price-performance, all without compromising x86 compatibility.”

Meta made a similar move in late 2021, as did Cloudflare. Cloudflare, in particular, found that Intel’s processors matched AMD’s in performance, but the “power consumption was several hundred watts higher per server – that’s enormous. This meant that Intel’s Performance per Watt was unattractive.”

AMD’s effort and reputation are clearly paying off, with the company now surpassing Intel in a market that was previously unassailable.