Sega’s $5M investment saved Nvidia in 1996, now Jensen Huang is heading to Tokyo to mark 30 years of partnership — Akihabara event will include a GeForce RTX 5090 FE lottery, an RTX Spark presentation, and more - Tom's Hardware

The partnership between NVIDIA and Sega dates back to 1996, when Sega invested $5 million in NVIDIA during its early struggles, helping the company survive. Now, to celebrate 30 years of collaboration... Read original →

Sega’s 1996 investment didn’t just rescue NVIDIA—it triggered a GPU domino effect: after failing Sega’s console due to DirectX incompatibility, NVIDIA pivoted to PC graphics, birthing RIVA and GeForce, which later became the backbone of AI-accelerated computing. Today, RTX Spark’s fusion of generative AI and ray tracing demands upgrades across game engines, middleware, and advanced packaging (e.g., TSMC’s CoWoS). Geopolitically, NVIDIA’s Tokyo showcase aligns with Japan’s semiconductor sovereignty push, hedging against U.S.-China tech decoupling. Against AMD’s RDNA 4 and Intel’s Battlemage, this move secures developer mindshare early. Within 18 months, an RTX 5090 FE based on Blackwell Ultra could revive the high-end DIY market and accelerate GDDR7 ramp-up by memory makers in Taiwan, China and South Korea—making this anniversary not nostalgia, but the starting gun for the next AI-graphics arms race.