Again when Nvidia was a smaller business participant, AMD virtually purchased it. Based on insiders, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had a deal-breaking situation that prevented the merger: He needed to be CEO of the joint firm.
Former AMD engineer Hemant Mohapatra shared a behind-the-scenes look into why an AMD-Nvidia alliance by no means got here to fruition in a collection of Friday posts on X. Mohapatra labored at AMD for over six years earlier than finally shifting into enterprise capital.
He wrote that AMD “ought to have acquired Nvidia — and we tried,” however Huang “clearly thought very long run and was constructing his ‘Apple technique'” of locking in customers.
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“He refused to promote until he was made the joint firm’s CEO to align with this technique,” Mohapatra wrote. “AMD blinked and our future trajectories splintered perpetually.”
However clearly, somebody at AMD noticed the long run. We simply noticed it partially. We should always have acquired Nvidia – and we tried. Nvidia – for individuals who bear in mind – was largely a “area of interest” CPU for hardcore avid gamers they usually went onerous on CUDA and AMD was a giant believer in OpenGL. Builders…
— Hemant Mohapatra (@MohapatraHemant) July 5, 2024
Present AMD engineer Phil Park confirmed Mohapatra’s account on Friday, writing, “I’ve by no means met Hemant, and although there are some things the place I’ve a special opinion, the anecdote about Jensen desirous to be CEO is true.”
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A 2012 Forbes article additional confirms the attainable Nvidia-AMD merger and provides it extra of a concrete time-frame.
Based on the piece, Nvidia virtually grew to become a part of AMD in 2006 as AMD tried to get forward of Intel by including a graphics arm. After Huang needed to be CEO of the mixed tech firm, AMD acquired Nvidia’s rival ATI for $5.4 billion in July 2006 as an alternative.
On the time of writing, Nvidia’s $3.1 trillion market cap is over ten occasions greater than AMD’s $288 billion.
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Nvidia “caught to their weapons, and the market got here to them finally when AI took off,” Mohapatra wrote. “Most hand over, Jensen simply saved going more durable.”
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in June 2024. SAM YEH/AFP by way of Getty Photos
Nvidia has been making graphics chips for greater than 30 years and began working in the direction of AI and deep studying in 2006.
The multi-year, multi-billion greenback effort gave Nvidia a head begin within the AI race: Nvidia’s chips at the moment are the brains of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Nvidia additionally has over 80% of the AI chip market, although competitors is intensifying as a few of its greatest tech shoppers give attention to making chips in-house.
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