Nvidia is one of the biggest players in the tech industry, with market capitalization exceeding that of Intel and AMD, but it turns out that AMD almost purchased it in the past. One former AMD engineer recently revealed that when Nvidia was an upstart, the company almost purchased it. He detailed Nvidia’s refusal to be bought primarily because Jensen Huang wouldn’t sell unless he was made the CEO of the merged company.
So now that Nvidia has far outstripped the market cap of AMD and Intel, I thought this would be a fun story to tell. I spent 6+yrs @ AMD engg in mid to late 2000s helping design the CPU/APU/GPUs that we see today. Back then it was unimaginable for AMD to beat Intel in market-cap… pic.twitter.com/bYCS5vY0QOJuly 5, 2024
Hemant Mohapatra was an engineer at AMD in the mid to late 2000s, helping design the CPUs, APUs, and GPUs still in service today. He was there when AMD realized it had an opportunity in the GPU market but initially missed it. Mohapatra recently offered a selection of his memories of the time on X (expand the tweet above).
Among those, Mohapatra recounted negotiations for AMD and Nvidia to merge into one company. However, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had a long-term strategy of locking Nvidia’s GPU to the proprietary and closed-source CUDA model. Not wanting to give up that strategy, Mohapatra says Huang refused to sell Nvidia unless he was made the joint company’s CE).
AMD's then-CEO Hector Ruiz opted instead to purchase rival ATI, bringing the Radeon name under AMD’s umbrella.
Another long-time AMD employee, Phil Park, verified this recollection via X. While Park said he never met Mohapatra and has different opinions on several of Mohapatra’s recollections, “the anecdote about Jensen wanting to be CEO is true.” Park offers additional commentary on Mohapatra's recollections, especially surrounding AMD's early efforts to design and market multicore CPUs.
I’ve never met Hemant, and though there are a few things where I have a different opinion, the anecdote about Jensen wanting to be CEO is true. https://t.co/TJjYeGSZvEJuly 5, 2024
At the time, Mohapatra recalls, Nvidia was “just one of the little boys.” The company’s graphics cards were highly sought after by the most serious gaming enthusiasts, but ATI (later acquired by AMD) had more of the market share overall. Mohapatra said AMD “never thought of them (Nvidia) in the same league as Arm/Intel.”
That’s clearly changed, especially now that AI is in such huge demand. Nvidia’s GPUs and AI hyperscalers dominate that industry, and AMD is trying to catch up once again. The full thread Mohapatra posted to X is a very interesting and enlightening read, with plenty of insight into what was happening behind the scenes during the chip wars of the 2000s.
So. Where is Mohapatra today? After just more than six years with AMD, he went on to Google and then Andreeson Horowitz. Now, he’s a venture capital partner and consultant for technology startups in India. And Jensen Huang himself remains CEO of Nvidia, which is now one of the most important companies in the world.
