In this CNN report, it has come to light that the CEOs of two tech giants, Nvidia and AMD, not only control a significant share of the global AI chip industry but also share a familial connection.
Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, and Lisa Su, the head of AMD, are distant cousins through their family roots in Taiwan, making their business competition even more interesting.
Surprising Family Ties
The link between these two powerhouses was first acknowledged by Lisa Su in 2020, and more recently, CNN reports that Taiwanese genealogist Jean Wu has delved into the details of their shared family history.
According to Wu, they are "biao jiu" in Mandarin Chinese, meaning first cousins once removed in Western terminology.
Tech Titans from Taiwan
While the fact that these tech giants are family might seem surprising at first, it is essential to understand their shared history and the impact of Taiwan's role in the tech industry.
Taiwan has long been at the forefront of hardware production, with companies like TSMC, ASUS, Acer, and Foxconn playing pivotal roles in the global tech landscape.
The culture of innovation and excellence in hardware manufacturing in Taiwan has influenced many young people to pursue careers in tech, as noted by Edith Yeung, a general partner at Silicon Valley's Race Capital.
Jensen Huang and Lisa Su's journeys into the tech world, despite growing up far apart, closely mirror each other. They both studied electrical engineering, with Su attending MIT and Huang studying at Oregon State University and Stanford University.
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Competition in the Global AI Chip Industry
Later in their careers, both found themselves in the semiconductor industry, working at different companies, but with a notable overlap at AMD, where Huang was a microprocessor designer before founding Nvidia. Lisa Su joined AMD as senior vice president and is credited with turning the company around.
Now, as the CEOs of Nvidia and AMD, they are competing in a market set to reach a staggering $1 trillion in value by 2030.
Their companies sell hardware and software to some of the world's leading tech giants. While they were once known primarily for GPUs that brought video games to life, their chips are now powering generative AI, including systems like ChatGPT.
OpenAI has used Nvidia's H100 GPUs to train ChatGPT, while AMD recently launched the MI300X, touted as "the world's most advanced accelerator for generative AI."
Both companies are also competing in the data center market, where they provide chips like CPUs and DPUs that enable computers to run operating systems and handle data processing.
In recent years, Nvidia and AMD have gained recognition for their contributions to electric cars and AI systems. The AI boom has propelled Nvidia to the forefront, with its stock climbing 208% in a single year - inching close to a trillion-dollar valuation. AMD's shares have also risen by 73% in 2023, even though it is smaller than Nvidia.
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