Jensen Huang is touching down in Tokyo this week, and the timing tells you everything you need to know about how seriously Nvidia takes its relationship with Japan’s tech ecosystem.
The Nvidia CEO is visiting Akihabara on July 15 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the partnership between Nvidia and Sega. But this isn’t just a nostalgia trip. The visit comes after Huang faced pointed criticism for a previous travel itinerary that included stops in South Korea and Taiwan while skipping Japan entirely, a snub that Japanese media dubbed the “Japan passing” controversy.
A $5 million bet that created a trillion-dollar company
Back in 1996, Nvidia was a small chip company staring down the barrel of bankruptcy. Sega stepped in with a $5 million investment that kept the lights on. That capital infusion wasn’t charity. It was a bet on Nvidia’s ability to build graphics hardware, starting with the NV1 chip that launched in 1995.
The Akihabara event will feature the Japan debut of the RTX Spark AI PC platform, along with a raffle for the GeForce RTX 5090 FE graphics card.
