Hong Kong/Taipei CNN —
Jensen Huang and Lisa Su have a lot in common.
The CEOs of Nvidia (NVDA) and AMD (AMD) are not only two of the most powerful people in the global AI chip industry, they are also family.
The connection was first acknowledged in 2020 by Su and more recently fleshed out in detail by Jean Wu, a Taiwanese genealogist.
The two didn’t grow up together, which perhaps makes things easier considering they’re now competing against each other in one of the most watched sectors in the world.
Their shared family history has its roots in Taiwan, an island increasingly caught between the United States and China as the two nations battle for high-tech supremacy.
According to Wu, a former financial journalist who now focuses on researching corporate families, Huang Su’s “biao jiu.” in Mandarin Chinese. In Western terms, they are first cousins once removed, which refers to cousins separated by a generation, she told CNN.
To be precise, Su is the granddaughter of Huang’s uncle, said Wu, who described how he identified their relationship through research in public records, newspaper clippings and yearbooks, as well as interviews with a close family member of Huang.
“We are distant relatives,” Su said with a smile when asked at a Consumer Technology Association (CTA) event in 2020.
An Nvidia spokesperson also confirmed that Huang is related to Su on his mother’s side as a distant cousin. Huang declined to comment for this story, while Su did not respond to a request for comment.
The link has become a point of intrigue for industry observers.
In Taiwan, where Su and Huang were born six years apart and now enjoy rock star status, the issue was covered in local news programs. Online, users of Reddit and other forums have commented on the coincidence, while sketches of alleged family trees have circulated on social media.
“I was really surprised,” Wu said of her discovery. “I think the people of Taiwan are happy about this because the world is finally seeing Taiwan.”
Christopher Miller, author of “Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology,” was also initially surprised.
“But otherwise it’s not surprising to find two people of Taiwanese descent at the absolute center of the chip industry,” he told CNN. “Because although Taiwan is far from Silicon Valley, there are actually no two parts of the world that are more closely connected in terms of family ties, in terms of business relationships, and in terms of educational relationships.”
I-Hwa Cheng/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Nvidia offices in Taipei
Taiwan has a long history of producing world-leading hardware that has underpinned its economy, noted Edith Yeung, general partner at Race Capital, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm.
She cited companies such as chip maker TSMC (TSM) and electronics makers ASUS, Acer and Foxconn as pioneers in encouraging many young people to pursue careers as technology engineers.
Miller confirmed this view. “For nearly half a century, Taiwan’s economy has been focused on electronics production, chip assembly, chip manufacturing, chip design and everything related to semiconductors. And if you look at Taiwan’s economy today, semiconductors are the largest export,” he said.
“This means that when young people come to university and think about possible career paths, semiconductors are one of the most popular choices.”
Su and Huang were no exception, even though they grew up largely abroad.
According to Nvidia, Huang was born in Taipei in 1963 before moving to the southern city of Tainan. His family later moved to Thailand to take over his father’s job at an oil refinery.
When Huang was nine years old, political unrest in the Southeast Asian country prompted his parents to briefly send him and his brother to live with relatives in Washington state, who then sent the siblings to a boarding school in Kentucky.
Meanwhile, Su was born in Tainan in 1969. She has traveled to the United States before, immigrating to New York City at the age of three.
Although the two grew up far apart, they followed similar paths as adults.
Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images
Su is speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show in January in Las Vegas. Su has become one of America’s highest-paid executives and was the highest-earning female CEO in the S&P 500 last year.
They chose the same major – electrical engineering – with Su studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Huang attending Oregon State University and Stanford University.
Later, when they landed in the fast-paced world of semiconductors, they worked at different companies but shared one employer.
Before founding Nvidia in 1993, Huang worked at AMD as a microprocessor designer. Su, of course, also joined AMD nearly two decades later as senior vice president and was ultimately credited with turning the company around.
Both executives are now based in Santa Clara, California, with their respective headquarters just a 5-minute drive from each other.
Their companies sell hardware and software to the world’s leading technology companies, in an industry that McKinsey predicts will be worth $1 trillion by 2030. In its most recent annual report, AMD named Nvidia as a top competitor in two of its four main business areas: gaming and data centers.
The companies were once best known among gamers for selling GPUs – graphics processing units – that display visual elements in video games, bringing them to life. While the two still compete in this space, their GPUs are now also being used for generative AI, the technology underlying new popular systems like ChatGPT.
For example, according to the chipmaker, Nvidia’s H100 GPUs were used by OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, to train its language model. These components were compared to AMD’s recently launched MI300X, which the company calls “the world’s most advanced generative AI accelerator.”
AMD announced this on Tuesday when it announced its earnings It expects GPUs to bring in more than $2 billion in sales in 2024 and that the MI300 series is expected to become “the fastest product.” reach $1 billion in revenue in AMD’s history.” The robust forecasts sent AMD shares up nearly 10% the next day.
Florence Lo/Portal
An AMD graphics processing unit (GPU). AMD and Nvidia were once best known in the gaming world for producing graphics chips.
The two also compete in selling equipment for data centers, the physical facilities that store large amounts of electronic information. They rely on chips such as central processing units (CPUs), which help computers run operating systems and programs smoothly, and data processing units (DPUs), which free up memory on computers so users can perform multiple tasks at the same time. AMD sells both components to companies, as does Nvidia.
In recent years, companies have gained greater mainstream recognition by providing cutting-edge technologies that promise to transform society. The processors they make are increasingly being used to power electric cars alongside AI systems, bolstering a reach that already includes virtually everything from PCs to PlayStations.
“I would say that anyone who logs on to the Internet is probably touching not just one, but dozens and hundreds of Nvidia and AMD chips,” Miller said.
“Most people never think about AMD or Nvidia because they never see the chips those companies produce. But in reality, you probably rely on both Nvidia and AMD in your daily life.”
The AI boom in particular has boosted shares of Nvidia, which is seen as a pioneer in the technology needed to train artificial intelligence. As a result, Nvidia stock experienced a massive rally, rising 208%. So far this year.
AMD’s shares are also up 73% so far in 2023, despite the company being much smaller than Nvidia, Miller noted.
Su has now become one of America’s highest-paid executives and was the highest-paid female CEO in the S&P 500 last year. She ranked among both male and female CEOs at companies in 2019, according to joint assessments by executive compensation analyst Equilar and the Associated Press at the top of the index.
I would say that anyone who logs on to the Internet is likely to get their hands on not just one, but dozens and hundreds of Nvidia and AMD chips.
Christopher Miller, author of “Chip War: The Battle for the World’s Most Critical Technology”
However, luck could change for both chipmakers as geopolitical tensions continue to rise. Last week, Nvidia said in a regulatory filing that U.S. export controls to China affecting some of its advanced AI chips took effect “immediately,” weeks ahead of schedule.
The company said it does not expect a “short-term significant impact on its financial results” but noted a possible “permanent loss of opportunity” from such restrictions in the long term.
AMD also announced in August that it would comply with US restrictions while developing products specifically for China.
Such concerns would likely far outweigh any awkward family dynamics.
When asked by CTA about her relationship with Huang in 2020, Su said: “I think Nvidia is a great company.”
“No question [that] The technological prowess they have demonstrated over the last decade has taken the industry into some of the key areas of AI,” she added.
“It is a competitive world, so there is no doubt that we compete fiercely. But it’s also a world in which you have to work with your competitors from time to time.”