Taiwanese American cousins going head-to-head in global AI race
Technology
Jensen Huang and Lisa Su have a lot in common
(Web Desk) - The chief executives of Nvidia (NVDA) and AMD (AMD) aren’t just two of the most powerful people in the global AI chip industry, they’re also family.
The connection was first acknowledged by Su in 2020, and more recently, has been fleshed out in detail by Jean Wu, a Taiwanese genealogist.
The two didn’t grow up together, which may make it easier considering they now compete against each other atop one of the world’s most closely-watched sectors.
Theirs is a shared family history with roots in Taiwan, an island increasingly caught between the United States and China, as the two nations battle for supremacy in high tech.
According to Wu, a former financial journalist who now focuses on researching corporate families, Huang is Su’s “biao jiu,” in Mandarin Chinese.
In Western terms, they are first cousins once removed, which refers to cousins separated by a generation, she told CNN.
To be exact, Su is Huang’s uncle’s granddaughter, said Wu, who described identifying their relationship by researching public records, newspaper clippings and yearbooks, as well as interviewing a close family member of Huang’s.
“We are distant relatives,” Su said with a smile, when asked at a Consumer Technology Association (CTA) event in 2020.
An Nvidia spokesperson also confirmed that Huang was related to Su as a distant cousin through his mother’s side of the family.
Huang declined to comment for this story, while Su did not respond to a request for comment.
The link has become a point of fascination for industry watchers.
In Taiwan, where Su and Huang were born six years apart and now enjoy rockstar status, the topic has been featured on local news broadcasts.
Online, users of Reddit and other forums have buzzed over the coincidence, while sketches of purported family trees have circulated on social media.
“I was really surprised,” Wu said of her discovery. “I think people in Taiwan are happy about it because the world finally sees Taiwan.”
Christopher Miller, author of “Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology,” said he was initially astonished, too.
“But in other ways, it’s not surprising to find two people of Taiwanese descent at the absolute center of the chip industry,” he told CNN.
“Because although Taiwan is a long way from Silicon Valley, in fact, there’s really no two parts of the world that are more closely networked in terms of family ties, in terms of business ties, in terms of educational ties.”
