The first Athlon processor was a result of AMD's development of K7 processors in the 1990s. AMD founder and then-CEO Jerry Sanders[8] aggressively pursued strategic partnerships and engineering talent in the late 1990s, working to build on earlier successes in the PC market with the AMD K6 processor line.[9][10] One major partnership announced in 1998 paired AMD with semiconductor giant Motorola[8] to co-develop copper-based semiconductor technology, resulting in the K7 project being the first commercial processor to utilize copper fabrication technology. In the announcement, Sanders referred to the partnership as creating a "virtual gorilla" that would enable AMD to compete with Intel on fabrication capacity while limiting AMD's financial outlay for new facilities.[8] The K7 design team was led by Dirk Meyer, who had previously worked as a lead engineer at DEC on multiple Alpha microprocessors. When DEC was sold to Compaq in 1998 and discontinued Alpha processor development, Sanders brought most of the Alpha design team to the K7 project.[citation needed] This added to the previously acquired NexGen K6 team, which already included engineers such as Vinod Dham.[11]