I heard from a first-hand account that in the late nineties Jensen tried to sell nVidia's IP to ATI. They refused, even though the offer was good. The rest, as they say, is history.
Didn't he want to be made head of ATI at the time though, as part of the deal?
That was AMD. They wanted to merge with Nvidia for their graphics IP, but didn't want to accept the condition, so they bought ATI eventually.