The design of cuda is basically just brookGPU from stanford (supported by IBM, Sony, ATI, NVIDIA and DARPA), CUDA isn't so important beyond the fact that a hardware company can use it as a moat if they want to be anti-competitive. Google bought PeakStream, intel bought RapidMind.

The situation only exists because regulators in the 80s-20s believe that hardware should be a sanctioned monopoly. Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, Sun Microsystems, IBM, HP, and Microsoft were all involved. If it's not Jensen it'd be someone else, there is a good reason NVIDIA is called NVIDIA and not JENSEN. Jensen's leadership is as much resonsible for CUDA as G. W. Bush's.