An AMD merger deal with NVIDIA is said to have, at one time, been in the works but fell through due to leadership details. It’s almost inconceivable but according to AMD Engineer Hemant Mohapatra, there was a point at which AMD nearly purchased NVIDIA. This industry paradigm-shifting event was said to have been in the works back when AMD instead ended up buying ATI. The point of contention came from Jensen Huang who wanted to replace then AMD CEO Hector Ruiz.
Per Hemant Mohapatra (via X formerly Twitter):
“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 (we did in 2020!) and for Nvidia to beat both! In fact, AMD almost bought Nvidia but Jensen wasn’t ready to sell unless he replace Hector Ruiz of AMD as the CEO of the joint company. The world would have looked very different had that happened. Here’s the inside scoop of how & why AMD saw the GPU oppty, lost it, and then won it back in the backdrop of Nvidia’s far more insane trajectory, & lessons I still carry from those heady days:”
Of course, now an AMD merger deal with NVIDIA seems almost unimaginable given each’s market shares in the enterprise server, AI, gaming consoles, and consumer GPU sectors. On top of that AMD also has its CPU division that competes favorably with Intel despite its GPU division never managing to topple NVIDIA’s lead in flagship tiers. Fellow AMD employee Phil Park shared on social media that while never having met Hemant, and not entirely agreeing with Hemant’s opinion, it was true that Jensen did indeed want to become CEO of AMD.