‘No family dinners’: AMD boss Lisa Su, 57, is Jensen Huang’s cousin — now she’s on the list to replace him at Nvidia

Nvidia and AMD did not immediately respond to Moneywise’s request for comment.

How Lisa Su and Jensen Huang are related

Su and Huang are first cousins once removed, according to Taiwanese genealogist Jean Wu, who laid out the family tree for CNN. An Nvidia spokesperson also confirmed the family tie. “Once removed” means they’re a generation apart: Huang’s mother is a sister of Su’s grandfather.

Both Huang and Su were born in Taiwan and raised mostly in the U.S., but they didn’t grow up together. Su told Bloomberg’s Emily Chang in 2024 that the two first met at an industry event, well into their careers. “No family dinners,” she said. “It is an interesting coincidence.”

Their résumés overlap, too. Huang worked at AMD as a microprocessor designer before starting Nvidia. Su joined AMD nearly two decades later and is credited with turning the company around.

How AMD became Nvidia’s closest rival under Lisa Su

AMD is the closest competitor to Nvidia in the technology it sells and the customers it serves. AMD’s stock has risen nearly 170-fold on Su’s watch, though the company is still a fraction of Nvidia’s size.

It’s growing fast. AMD reported record third-quarter revenue of $13.4 billion on Nov. 3, up 45% from a year earlier. Sales in its data center unit, which makes server processors and AI chips, nearly doubled. Su said she expects revenue to climb more than 80% in 2027, above Wall Street’s estimate, and analysts at TD Cowen called AMD the leading alternative to Nvidia, Reuters reported.

Su has talked about competing with her relative’s company before. Asked about Huang at a Consumer Technology Association event in 2020, she called Nvidia a great company, then added: “It is a competitive world, so there’s no question that we compete hard. But it’s also a world where you also have to partner with your competitors from time to time.”