“Coming to Computex? And will you see the CEO of Nvidia? We love him here in Taiwan.” These are the words of a tour guide who has just met us and serve as an icebreaker in the hotel elevator, but they would serve as a summary of the effervescent news on the island. There has been no greater attraction in Taipei these days than that of chase Jensen Huang wherever he went: Crowds have lined the night markets in search of the famous black leather jacket, flocked to restaurants where the CEO of the technology company had eaten and asked him to sign anything they came across, screaming and almost fainting. She is the Taylor Swift of the chip industry, the national hero of Taiwan. But she has a very strong rival who promises to overshadow her: the head of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Lisa Suhis second cousin.
Rumours have been circulating on the internet for years, trying to piece together the loose ends, as both are of Taiwanese origin, emigrated to the United States during their childhood and their professional life has been directed towards chips. The mystery was solved by a Taiwanese genealogy expert, Jean Wu, who, after an exhaustive search, several interviews with Huang’s relatives and a collection of data, came to the most coveted conclusion: Nvidia CEO’s mother is Lisa Su’s grandmother’s sisterthat is, they are second cousins. Although the story may seem far-fetched, the relationship between the two has been confirmed by AMD’s own CEO. In a 2020 interview, where she was directly asked about her relationship with her direct competitor, Su smilingly replied “yes, we are distantly related.”
The rivalry between the two reached its peak at the last Computex technology fairheld in Taiwan. Su was chosen to give the opening speech at the forum ahead of Huang, who opened the previous year’s edition. Not wanting to break the habit, the CEO of Nvidia announced that his presentation of new products, a two-hour show where he is the main attraction, would be the day before the start of the fair. As a counterattack, Su went up on stage at Computex with several business partners with whom he has collaborated to create the first computers with artificial intelligence, such as Luca Rossi, executive vice president of Lenovo, or Enrique Lores, CEO of HP. At one point in his presentation, Jonney Shih, president of the Taiwanese Asustek, described Su as “pride of Taiwan”a term that is generally associated with Huang. Both are competing for the throne of leading the implementation of artificial intelligence in laptops and in all the sectors that surround us, hence their products are constantly updated every few months.
Family destined for technology
Unlike the history of hatred between Adidas and Puma, the brands created by the feud between brothers Adolf and Rudolf Dassler, it seems that Huang and Su did not meet until their arrival at the companies they now lead. Huang moved to Thailand when he was five years old and from there his parents sent him to the United States. After completing a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Oregon State University and a master’s degree in the same field from Stanford University, He founded Nvidia in 1993 with fellow engineers Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem. to focus on the development of graphics processing units (GPUs).
Over time, the three engineers realized that GPUs were also used to run complex algorithms, such as those used today in Amazon and Google data centers or in artificial intelligence systems. This is how a company that started its journey with $40,000 came to multiply its profits by seven in the first fiscal quarter of 2024 with $14.881 billion and is already the second largest company by market capitalization, above Apple, with a valuation of $3.01 trillion and a revaluation of 218% in the last year. The company It has a market share of over 80% in its fieldand as a result, its logo appeared on almost all the new products presented at Computex. During its appearance at the fair, Nvidia announced its two next launches without going into detail about them: the Blackwell Ultra AI for 2025, an update of the current GB200 that it presented just two months ago, and the Rubin AI platform that will hit the market in 2026.
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Su’s story is very similar. She came to New York when she was just two years old and earned her bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her professional career began at the Semiconductor Process and Display Center at Texas Instruments and from there she jumped to IBM, where she worked for 13 years in various engineering and business management positions. In 2012 she joined AMD as senior vice president and general manager of the business units at the global level, and two years later, He took over the reins as CEO in the midst of the company’s collapse.
It is said that she is the AMD’s saviorThe firm had laid off a quarter of its staff to clean up its accounts and each share was trading at just two dollars. saw an opportunity in Intel’s missteps over Apple’s decision not to use its chips in iPhones and for its delays in manufacturing its units and launched into signing agreements with laptop manufacturers, such as Lenovo, and with giants such as Google to fill the void left by the American company. And it worked out well. Between January and March 2024, its net profit amounted to 123 million dollars and its stock market value has increased by 42% in the last year to 167 dollars per share. AMD presented the Ryzen AI 300 chips at Computex, which have a performance of 50 TOPS (trillion operations per second) aimed at new computers with artificial intelligence in models from Lenovo, ASUS, HP and Microsoft.
Source: www.epe.es
