Jensen Huang's K-Game Tour Aims to Rally Nvidia's Gaming Unit

Behind Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's pro-gaming activities lies an apparent intent to strengthen internal unity. By expressing a message of respect for the gaming product business that once sustained the company's revenue but now occupies a diminished position, he aims to boost the morale of his staff.

According to the information technology industry Wednesday, Huang visited PC cafes three times during his trip to Korea, and the remarks he made during these visits are being interpreted as partly intended to foster internal cohesion at Nvidia. Analysts say Huang's hidden intent was likely to encourage the business unit dedicated to gaming-related graphics processing units (GPUs), such as the GeForce series.

Today, Nvidia's flagship products are data center GPUs such as the Hopper and Blackwell series. But in the 2000s and 2010s, the products that made a remarkable contribution to Nvidia's revenue were gaming graphics cards. As the global artificial intelligence (AI) boom took hold in the 2020s, the center of Nvidia's business shifted from gaming graphics cards to data center GPUs.

According to Nvidia's regulatory filings, in 2017, gaming-related products generated 4.06 billion dollars in revenue, accounting for 58.8% of Nvidia's total revenue of 6.91 billion dollars. Last year, gaming product revenue of 11.4 billion dollars shrank to 8.7% of Nvidia's total revenue of 130.5 billion dollars. By contrast, over the same period, the share of data center-related revenue surged from 12.0% (830 million dollars) to 88.3% (115.2 billion dollars).

Although gaming-related revenue contribution has fallen to single digits, Huang showed that he still holds an attachment to the gaming product business. After arriving in Korea on Friday, his first stop was a PC cafe operated by the esports club T1. That day, he met with this newspaper and said, "PC gaming is Nvidia's origin," adding, "I will consider visiting a PC cafe every time I come to Korea."

On Sunday, he met in succession with Krafton (259960.KS) Chairman Chang Byung-gyu and NCSoft CEO Kim Taek-jin, and the meeting venue that day was also a PC cafe. During the two-day schedule, Huang unveiled the physical "GeForce RTX 5090," an unreleased graphics card, and personally promoted the new product, calling it "one of my favorite products."

Huang's public show of support for gaming reflects his management philosophy of not evaluating business units solely by short-term results. One characteristic of Nvidia's management approach is that even when a particular business fails to deliver results, the company does not immediately cut it but invests funds and time over the long term to support future performance gains.

A former Nvidia executive said, "One of Nvidia's company creeds is, 'There is no individual failure. There is only the failure of everyone (the team).'" He added, "Huang's gaming-related schedule is meant to boost staff morale by sending a message both inside and outside the company that 'we have not forgotten the gaming product business.'"