NVIDIA & AMD CEOs Are Cousins (Sort Of): How Lisa Su And Jensen Huang Are Related

The bosses of AMD (Lisa Su) and NVIDIA (Jensen Huang) are technically related to each other. Some people say that they are “cousins” but the relationship is a little more complicated than that, as I explore in this quick video. I dive into their family tree (thanks to Jean’s Talk) to show the exact family relationship, and also discuss how there’s another wealth company exec in the mix.

I also touch on why Su and Huang being related isn’t the most surprising of facts, partly because of Taiwan’s wealth divide and also because other families have competing business owners (like how Adidas and Puma were started by rival companies).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X23un0_Xm3c&t=45s

If you prefer text over video, please read on for the guide/transcript version of this video.

Video Transcript And Guide

Hey everyone, quite a quick video today – the CEO of AMD (Lisa Su) and NVIDIA‘s CEO Jensen Huang are related to each other. Okay thanks for watching! Kidding. Kidding. This fact sometimes pops up – with people saying that Lisa Su and Jensen Huang are “cousins”. This is sort of true. I mean, they ARE part of the same BIG Taiwanese family, which is pretty crazy considering that they each run multi billion dollar companies. Sorry Jensen, multi trillion dollar companies in your case.

Taiwan’s Wealth Divide

Now this is quite a crazy fact but it’s not COMPLETELY surprising. Taiwan has got a decently big wealth divide, and there are a LOT of rich, powerful families. Credit Suisse estimates that Taiwan has almost 900 hundred thousand millionaires (basically, almost a million people with a net worth of over a million US dollars). And since Taiwan only has a population of 23 million people (including children), that means that over 5% of Taiwanese adults are millionaires. So having a big Taiwanese family with multiple rich people in it isn’t all that surprising, I guess.

Rival Brothers

Plus it’s not exactly uncommon to have ‘power families’ where multiple people are business owners. The sports brands Adidas and Puma were actually founded by rival brothers. They originally had a shoe factory called Geda but after having a big falling out, Adolf “Adi” Dassler formed Adidas and Rudolph Dassler founded Puma. 

So this DOES happen and turning back to Su and Huang’s family, they aren’t the only company execs in the family. They have a first cousin who is the boss of a concrete company, and their children help run the company too.

How AMD and NVIDIA Bosses Are Related

So let’s look at exactly how the NVIDIA and AMD bosses are related to each other – thanks to Jean Talk for this really useful family tree. People from India and other Desi cultures would probably say that Lisa Su is Jensen Huang’s niece, whereas Mexicans would refer to them as being second cousins. That’s fairly clear, BUT people in the West have a few different ways of phrasing this relationship so let’s go through the family tree in detail.

Jensen Huang’s mother was born in 1939. She had two older siblings – and the eldest brother was born in 1921. He had three daughters, one of whom was born in 1944. And she is Lisa Su’s mother. That might sound like a distant relationship, but effectively Lisa’s grandfather is the uncle of Jensen. OR you could say that Lisa Su GREAT grandparents are the same people as Jensen Huang’s grandparents.

In Western terms, this makes them first cousins once removed. That’s kinda a close link, so it IS pretty interesting that two of the biggest tech companies are part of the same Taiwanese family. 

Lisa Su And Jensen Huang

But it’s worth noting that Lisa Su and her parents emigrated to America when she was just 3 year’s old, while Jensen moved to America at the age of 9 (after living in Thailand for a few year.). So it’s not like they regularly have awkward family dinners where all the elders scold everyone for not being as successful as Lisa and Jensen!

If you’re interested in other PC industry facts, you can check out this video that discusses why Bill Gates kept saying “You’re full of s***. That’s the stupidest f***ing thing I’ve ever heard” to his employees and also Steve Job’s “illegal” recruitment approach.