The actual quote from your link is: "Expect a massively programmable, massively parallel and pipelined graphics monster", not a "compute monster".

While I agree that Nvidia positioned themselves well, they were not looking as far forward as you suggest. As I recall it, they seemed surprised by BrookGPU, though they moved quickly to embrace the model.

And there were earlier proto examples of GPU compute that that were completely overlooked: https://web.archive.org/web/20010607021839/http://freespace.... (scroll down to "Optimising with 3D Rendering Hardware")