Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, has penned a heartfelt letter to employees in Israel. CTech reports that it has had eyes on the letter (h/t The Register) and headlines with Huang’s mourning of the death of Mellanox founder Eyal Waldman’s daughter, Danielle. In the note, Huang wrote sorrowfully of the death of another ‘Nvidian,’ hoping for the safe return of an employee being held hostage by Hamas.
Eyal Waldman, the Israeli high-tech magnate, astounded the tech industry and the entire Arab world by creating research and development centers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, all while employing hundreds of Palestinian developers. On Saturday, Hamas murdered his daughter Daniel pic.twitter.com/6KNuKhAXZPOctober 12, 2023
Mellanox CEO and founder Eyal Waldman was singled out for support by the Nvidia CEO, as it was noted that he lost his daughter in the horrific Hamas attack on the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im, a few miles from the Gaza border.
Danielle Waldman and her partner, Noam Shai, a former Nvidia employee, “were killed in the horrific attack at a peace festival,” Huang confirmed to employees. Some other specific tragedies that the Nvidia boss recounted were employees who lost their brother in military action in the last few days and a VLSI team colleague (and his girlfriend) currently “being held by terrorists.”
Israel-based networking giant Mellanox was acquired by Nvidia in 2019 in a deal worth nearly $7 billion. More than a year later, Mellanox was officially absorbed by Nvidia and rebranded as Nvidia Networking, cementing its place in the Nvidia family and its employees as fellow Nvidians. The firm has about 3,300 employees in Israel, and hundreds have been called for military service.
In addition to the specifics mentioned above, Huang wrote that the news of the events in Israel has been greeted with horror. “The scale and brutality of the attacks and the suffering they inflict are difficult to fathom,” wrote the Nvidia CEO. “For our families in Israel, the news is a living nightmare.”
Huang described how “hundreds of Nvidians” support others in need and pledged local HR and security support, counseling services, and the beginning of a humanitarian relief campaign. According to the source report, the Nvidia CEO signed off by promising “we are here for you” to all colleagues in Israel.
Last week, we reported that Israel canceled its AI Summit, which was scheduled as an in-person event in Tl-Aviv, Israel, from October 15-16. The reason for the last-minute cancellation was to ensure the “safety and wellbeing of our participants” in the wake of the recent terrible events and sensing possible escalation.
