In the tech world, the market cap game is like a roller coaster, one moment you are on top and the next you are below.
Imagine that AMD is now worth twice as much as Intel, and NVIDIA is more than a dozen times more valuable than AMD!
But in the script 20 years ago, NVIDIA was just the little brother of the Big Three, and he almost gave himself away, all because of a small condition of Huang — he wanted to be the boss.
Speaking of Hemant Mohapatra, this dude spent the first half of this century at AMD for six years, designing a bunch of CPUs, GPUs, and APUs, some of which are still in use today.
He was both surprised and amused by this earth-shaking change, and also revealed a little secret: it turned out that AMD was also eyeing the big cake of GPUs, and even wanted to swallow NVIDIA. But Huang Jenxun's buddy insisted on wearing the CEO's hat, how could Lu Yizhi, the boss of AMD at the time, agree—didn't this become a question of who buys whom!
Eventually, in July 2006, AMD paid $5.4 billion for NVIDIA's arch-rival ATI instead of NVIDIA. Phil Park, another former AMD employee, also confirmed the truth of the story.
Imagine if AMD and NVIDIA had decided to be best friends and combine their respective superpowers, the world today might have been ruled by their league of superheroes.