Intel’s CEO, Pat Gelsinger, threw some shade at Nvidia, calling their success in AI GPUs “extraordinarily lucky.” He hinted that Intel could’ve been the AI hardware champ if they hadn’t axed one of his favorite projects 15 years ago.

During a chat at MIT, someone asked Gelsinger what Intel is doing for AI. His response? Basically, he thinks Nvidia hit the jackpot with their AI-accelerating GPUs.

Gelsinger shared his take on GPUs becoming the go-to for big AI models, suggesting that Nvidia and CEO Jensen Huang stumbled upon success. He mentioned how hard Huang worked on graphics computing but also claimed they got lucky.

According to Gelsinger, Intel would’ve taken a different path if they hadn’t ditched the Larrabee project when he left 13 years ago. Larrabee, Intel’s early GPU project, aimed to challenge Nvidia in gaming and GPGPU with tiny x86 CPU cores. Unfortunately, it got the boot in 2009. While Gelsinger points out that Nvidia didn’t plan for AI initially, he also acknowledges that they bet big on GPUs, even if they didn’t foresee the AI boom. Was Nvidia lucky? Partly, but Gelsinger acknowledges the hard work they put in. As the saying goes, “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”

Let’s see how Intel’s luck shapes up under Gelsinger’s leadership in the coming years.