Despite losing its North America channel chief for a second year in a row, AMD says its commitment to the channel has ‘only strengthened’ as the chip designer bets its next phase of growth on the promise of AI to compete with Intel, Nvidia and others.

AMD said its commitment to the channel has “only strengthened” despite recently losing its North America channel chief for a second year in a row.

Mark Taylor left AMD in May after the chip designer hired him in July 2023 as the successor to its first North America channel chief, Terry Richardson, according to his LinkedIn profile.

[Related: Analysis: As Nvidia Takes AI Victory Lap, AMD Doubles The Trouble For Intel]

An AMD spokesperson told CRN on Friday that Taylor “decided to leave AMD in pursuit of other opportunities” and that while the company is “exploring potential candidates” for his replacement, it will “continue to deliver value to our North America customers and partners across the channel ecosystem.”

“While we are saddened to see Mark go, our commitment to the channel has only strengthened and our entire team is focused on maintaining business continuity for our programs and partners,” the representative said.

“Our channel partner program is stronger than it has ever been, and we will continue to deliver value to our North America customers and partners across the channel ecosystem,” the AMD spokesperson added.

Taylor (pictured above) now lists himself as vice president and general manager at TBX Services, a division of St. Louis, Mo.-based World Wide Technology, No. 7 on CRN’s 2024 Solution Provider 500 list.

CRN recognized Taylor, a former Arrow Electronics leader, as one of this year’s most influential channel chiefs, a reflection of the chip designer’s heightened presence in the channel as the company bets its next phase of growth on the promise of AI to compete with Intel, Nvidia and others across the PC, data center, cloud and edge markets.

As of February, AMD had 675 worldwide channel partners, 135 of which were under Taylor’s purview in North America, according to his profile on CRN’s 2024 Channel Chiefs feature.

During his time at AMD, Taylor oversaw the relaunch of the company’s cloud partner program last year, which complemented existing partner programs in the data center and PC markets, according to his CRN profile. More recently, he was shaping AMD’s programs to prepare partners for new AI-related products in the PC, data center and cloud markets.

In the profile, Taylor said his organization also increased the number of business development resources working with partners, increased the number of server and PC demo units available to partners, increased funding to help partners create demand for products and built a team of dedicated technical resources for partners.

AMD planned to grow its partner roster and budget for market development funds this year, according to Taylor’s profile. His top channel goals for 2024 were to increase how much revenue came through channel partners, to increase the number of brand-new accounts coming through partners and to improve the technical skills of partners.

Taylor’s predecessor, Richardson, was a former longtime Hewlett Packard Enterprise channel and sales executive. He was hired as AMD’s first North America channel chief in March 2021 to develop a new commercial partner program and lean on his many relationships in the channel to build brand preference among solution providers.

Richardson left AMD in April 2023 to become chief revenue officer of Portsmouth, N.H.-based solution provider Blue Mantis, previously known as GreenPages. His departure coincided with that of distribution veteran Marty Bauerlein, who worked for Richardson as head of North American VAR channels and commercial distribution at AMD for a year-and-a-half.

Bauerlein, who is now chief consumer and commercial officer at Harrisburg, Pa.-based D&H Distributing, told CRN on Tuesday that he remains bullish on AMD.

“AMD has robust programs for distributors and solution providers, specifically targeted for its EPYC server CPUs and Ryzen client CPUs,” he said. “This has strengthened AMD’s position, especially with the growing popularity of its products in various channels as they have a great diversification strategy.”

The chip designer plans to ramp up channel efforts soon around its growing portfolio of Instinct data center accelerator chips, the main way AMD is seeking to challenge Nvidia’s dominance in the AI computing space, Forrest Norrod, AMD’s top data center executive, told CRN in June.

A senior executive at a major U.S. solution provider, Insight Enterprises, told CRN that her company is “very aligned” with AMD on the chip designer’s AI strategy. She said this is reflected in several ways, such as a recent meeting between the two firms’ top executives that included AMD CEO Lisa Su and Insight CEO Joyce Mullen.

“They’ve really been listening to their partners in terms of feedback on their partner programs, and I wouldn’t have said the same just a few years ago,” said Megan Amdahl, senior vice president of client experience and North America COO at Chandler, Ariz.-Insight, which is No. 17 on CRN’s 2024 Solution Provider 500 list.