CEO Nvidia and AMD: Two nephews disrupting the AI chip industry.

Nvidia CEO and AMD CEO: Two influential figures in the AI chip industry and also relatives from Taiwan.

The close relationship between Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and AMD CEO Lisa Su was first mentioned by Ms. Su in 2020 during an event by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). “We are distant relatives,” she revealed.

Recently, genealogist Jean Wu from Taiwan also revealed details about the two individuals based on a series of administrative documents showing that Jensen Huang is a cousin of Lisa Su. Both leaders have not commented on the information, but a spokesperson from Nvidia confirmed that Mr. Huang is a distant relative of Ms. Su.

A Similar Path

The familial relationship between Jensen Huang and Lisa Su has attracted attention from industry analysts in the semiconductor field.

“I was truly surprised,” said Wu about her discovery.

Christopher Miller, author of the book Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology, also expressed surprise at the revelation that the leaders of Nvidia and AMD are relatives. “The fact that these two individuals with shared family roots in Taiwan are at the forefront of the semiconductor industry is remarkable,” he said.

According to Edith Yeung, a partner at the venture capital firm Race Capital in Silicon Valley, Taiwan is developing world-class computer hardware to drive its economy. Companies such as TSMC, Asus, Acer, and Foxconn are leading the industry, encouraging many young people to pursue careers as technology engineers.

“For nearly 50 years, the economy in Taiwan has revolved around the production of electronic devices, as well as chip design, manufacturing, and assembly. Semiconductors are the largest export sector here, attracting many young individuals to pursue careers in this field,” Miller explained. Jensen Huang and Lisa Su are no exception, although they mostly grew up abroad.

Huang was born in 1963 in Taipei before moving to Tainan. His family relocated to Thailand when his father worked at an oil refinery. When Huang was 9 years old, political unrest in Thailand led his parents to send him and his brother to live with relatives in Washington state, United States. He later attended boarding school in Kentucky.

Lisa Su was born in Tainan in 1969. Her family immigrated to the United States three years later and settled in New York.

Despite growing up in different places, Jensen Huang and Lisa Su share a common career path. They both pursued electrical engineering, with Su attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Huang studying at the University of Oregon and Stanford University.

They entered the semiconductor industry and both had stints at AMD. Huang worked as a microprocessor designer at the company before founding Nvidia in 1993. Su joined AMD nearly 20 years later and held high-level executive positions, earning praise for revitalizing the company.

From relatives to rivals

Now, both are high-level technology leaders. Their offices are located in Santa Clara, California, just a 5-minute drive apart.

Nvidia and AMD both sell hardware and software to leading technology companies, participating in an industry that could reach $1 trillion by 2030. In their latest annual report, AMD considers Nvidia as a top competitor in two out of four major business areas, which are data centers and gaming devices.

Nvidia and AMD are both renowned for their graphics processing units (GPUs) specialized in image processing for gaming. GPUs now also play a significant role in the AI race, a technology closely associated with popular products like ChatGPT.

Nvidia’s H100 chip is used by OpenAI to train the language model for ChatGPT, while AMD has also released the MI300X series, which they call “the world’s most advanced AI inference processor.” On October 31st, AMD stated that their GPUs could generate revenue of over $2 billion in 2024, emphasizing that the MI300 is projected to be the “fastest $1 billion revenue-generating product in the company’s history.”

Both companies also compete in the data center product market, including CPUs and data processing units (DPUs).

In recent years, Nvidia and AMD have been recognized for bringing cutting-edge technologies that have the potential to reshape society. Their processors are increasingly prevalent in electric vehicles and AI systems, in addition to traditional markets like personal computers and gaming consoles.

“Anyone who connects to the internet may need dozens or even hundreds of Nvidia and AMD chips. Most users don’t pay attention because they never see the chips produced by these two companies. However, the daily lives of many people rely on chips from both companies,” said Miller.

The AI boom has significantly boosted Nvidia’s value, with the company’s stock rising by 208% this year. AMD’s stock has also increased by 73%, despite the company being much smaller in scale compared to Nvidia.

Lisa Su is currently one of the highest-paid executives in the United States and topped the list of highest-paid female CEOs in the S&P 500 index last year. She has praised Nvidia as a “great company” when asked about her family relationship with Huang.

“They both possess leading technologies in key AI areas over the past 10 years. It is a competitive world, and there is no doubt that we compete fiercely, but it is also a world where we have to collaborate with our counterparts,” said the CEO of AMD.