AMD Hires Salesforce President Ariel Kelman As CMO To ‘Deepen’ Ecosystem Engagement

AMD hired Salesforce CMO and President Ariel Kelman as it pushes to win over developers, partners and customers with its Instinct GPU platform in competition with Nvidia and as it ramps up marketing investments with partners for its CPU business.

AMD said Monday that it has hired Salesforce CMO and President Ariel Kelman as its new marketing chief, a role that will see him “deepen engagement with customers, partners, developers and the broader technology ecosystem.”

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company made the announcement as it pushes to win over these key constituencies with its Instinct GPU platform in competition against Nvidia, which dominates the AI infrastructure market. AMD is also several months into the launch of a new partner program meant to put pressure on Intel and other rivals.

Salesforce didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

A statement by Kelman indicated the outsized importance of Instinct and related products to AMD’s future growth. AMD CEO Lisa Su said at an investor event last November that she sees a “very clear path” to double-digit share growth in the data center AI market, which could drive an average of 80 percent revenue growth over the next several years.

“I’m looking forward to working with the team to elevate the AMD brand, deepen engagement with customers and partners and capture the massive AI data center opportunity enabled by AMD’s uniquely differentiated products. That combination is what energizes me most,” said Kelman in his statement.

In his new role as senior vice president and CMO, Kelman will lead AMD’s global marketing organization, “overseeing brand, communications, events, developer relations and go-to-market strategy,” according to the company.

Reporting to AMD Chief Administrative Officer Ruth Cotter, the new CMO is expected to “work closely with the AMD executive team to deepen engagement with customers, partners, developers and the broader technology ecosystem as AMD continues to scale its product and solutions leadership,” the company said.

While AMD views Instinct as its biggest growth opportunity going forward, the company continues to invest in its traditional CPU business, pushing against Intel and other rivals in the PC, server, gaming and embedded markets.

The chip designer is making this CPU push with channel partners, particularly when it comes to marketing. The company told CRN last year that it made a more than 40 percent increase to its overall channel investment budget, which included marketing funds.

Partners have been taking notice of the funding boost.

“Within the last few weeks, they were engaging in marketing programs with us, so that seems to be improving,” said Dominic Daninger, vice president of engineering at Burnsville, Minn.-based systems integrator Nor-Tech, in a recent interview with CRN.

However, the partner program is mainly focused on CPUs for now as AMD continues to prioritize high-touch engagements for its Instinct platform with large and influential customers such as OpenAI, Microsoft Azure, Meta and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Kelman is taking over from longtime AMD marketing executive John Taylor, who left the company last December after leading the launch of its “together we advance_” brand platform that continues to dominate marketing materials.

Before Kelman became Salesforce’s president and CMO in mid-2023, he held top marketing posts at Oracle and Amazon Web Services. Prior to that, he served in various marketing roles for several years in a separate stint at Salesforce.