Morris Chang, founder and former CEO of TSMC, even offered leadership of the company to Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. The information comes from Chang himself, as he tells in one of the chapters of his autobiography, which will be published soon.
According to a translation by Tom’s Hardware, Chang explains in his book the context of the offer to Huang. Almost 20 years ago, TSMC faced economic challenges, which led its founder to return to the role of CEO in 2009.
After achieving a little more stability and landing one of the chipmaker’s most important customers to date – Apple – Chang began looking for a successor. In 2013, at the age of 82, the founder of TSMC was thinking about looking for someone from outside instead of promoting one of his executives.
The then head of TSMC wasn’t very excited about promoting someone internally, especially so soon after dismissing the company’s previous CEO, Rick Tsai. Therefore, he was looking for a successful executive who could come from the outside with a proven leadership stance.
Jensen Huang did not want to lead TSMC
NVIDIA is currently the most valuable company in the world, being the main beneficiary of the wave of AI hype that dominates the industry. In 2013 the company was nowhere near the titan it has become today, but it was already doing very well.
At the time, NVIDIA already commanded 60% of the domestic GPU market, expanded its presence into mobile and consumer electronics with new generations of Tegra and continued to gain space in data centers. Therefore, Chang decided that the leader of this successful company, Jensen Huang, would be the right choice for TSMC.
As we all know, Huang turned down the position. The jacket executive believed in his long-term vision for NVIDIA, and time has proven him right.
Command of the chipmaker went to CC Wei
After Huang’s refusal, Morris Chang decided to appoint two people to lead TSMC. Still in 2013, CC Wei and Mark Liu were appointed as “co-CEOs” of the Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer.
Chang completed his retirement and actually left the company only in 2018, at which point Liu became chairman of the board of directors and CC Wei continued as sole CEO.
In 2023, Liu decided to leave the company, so Wei currently works as CEO and chairman of TSMC. Interestingly, Jensen Huang also holds both positions at NVIDIA.
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Source: https://www.adrenaline.com.br/hardware/fundador-da-tsmc-chegou-a-oferecer-chefia-da-companhia-para-jensen-huang-ceo-da-nvidia/
