- AMD CEO Lisa Su and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang are first cousins once removed, a researcher said.
- Su told Bloomberg they did not grow up together and were “really distant.”
- “No family dinners,” she said. “It is an interesting coincidence.”
AMD CEO Lisa Su said in a recent interview that she never met Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, her competitor and distant relative, until later in their careers.
“We were really distant, so we didn’t grow up together,” Su said in an interview with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang published Thursday. “We actually met at an industry event. So it wasn’t until we were well into our careers.”
Former journalist and genealogist Jean Wu said last year that Su and Huang, both Taiwanese chief executives of global chip powerhouses, are first cousins, once removed. Huang, 61, is the older cousin to Su, 55. Huang’s mother is a sister to Su’s grandfather, a condensed family tree Wu published on her Facebook account showed.
Su confirmed the familial relationship with her competitor in 2020, saying that the two are “distant relatives, so some complex second cousin type of thing.”
An Nvidia spokesperson confirmed to CNN last year that Su is Huang’s distant cousin through his mother’s side.
An Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment on this story, and an AMD spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Huang and Su have eerily similar career paths but different upbringings.
Su was born in Tainan, whereas Huang was born in Taiwan’s capital, Taipei.
The AMD CEO later moved to the US, where she grew up in New York and studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Huang lived in Washington and Kentucky before settling in Oregon. He later attended Oregon State University.
Su said in the Bloomberg interview that she has a large family she visits when she travels back to Taiwan.
“My dad had like nine siblings, and my mom had like six, so it was like a big family,” she said. “So there are lots and lots of cousins and aunts and uncles.”
Despite their familial ties, Su and Huang never crossed paths at those family gatherings.
“No family dinners,” she said. “It is an interesting coincidence.”
