Metrowerks/Code Warrior had an x86 compiler in the late 90s. CodeWarrior was the BeOS PPC compiler and it was also used for the x86 R3 release (1998). For R4, they switched to GCC 2.9 (and from PE to ELF) because it generated better code (perhaps there were financial and other considerations as well).

Be paid Cygnus for the gcc port, shortly before red hat bought up Cygnus.