AMD and Nvidia were close to merging about twenty years ago. The deal ultimately fell through because Jensen Huang wanted to remain CEO.

A former AMD employee shares the anecdote about X. In the 2000s, AMD tried to absorb Nvidia. AMD began to see potential in the GPU market, which was nowhere near the size it is today. The focus was on Nvidia, a niche player that was unknown at the time.

The negotiations ultimately failed because a certain Jensen Huang blocked the deal. The founder and CEO of Nvidia had a clear long-term vision for his company. The CUDA software platform played an important role in this, and Huang therefore did not want to simply hand it over to AMD. Huang would only agree if he could become CEO of the merged company.

AMD CEO Hector Ruiz did not like that. Ruiz abandoned the merger plans and AMD took over the ATI company in 2006 instead of Nvidia. The result of this takeover is Radeon, AMD’s GPUs. Ruiz resigned as CEO of AMD in 2008. Lisa Su has been with AMD since 2014, a niece of Jensen Huang.

The IT world could have been completely different. Twenty years later, Nvidia has left AMD far behind in the graphics market and has even become the (second) most valuable company in the world. AMD is also doing well as a chip manufacturer, but will now swear that the company that wanted to take over twenty years ago has now hit the AI ​​jackpot.