3dfx board members keep details of a buy out from rival graphics firm Nvidia secret because it knew its engineers hated the company.
Nvidia Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang told a court yesterday that the 3dfx board did not include employees in the buy out plan because they assumed that all the engineers would leave the moment the deal was announced. He said that the company had been rivals for so longthat forcing their engineers to come to Nvidia would be impossible. The Nvidia CEO said he always planned to recruit the former 3dfx engineers. That was his primary reason for wanting to buy 3dfx.
Huang was interested in the engineers and negotiated seperate deals with them later. Ultimately, Nvidia
hired about 100 engineers from 3dfx, out of about 120 engineers the firm hoped for. Huang said he spent two or three days conducting one-on-one interviews with potential hires.
3dfx shareholders claim that Nvidia should have paid much more for the company, saying that the engineering talent alone was worth more than the rest of the company's assets.