How the gaming community turned on Nvidia founder Jensen Huang

When AI took shape, executives in tech services firms were the first to herald it as disruptive. What followed were mass layoffs, and at one point, it seemed that if anyone hated AI more, it would be the people it replaced.

But then came the gamers. It all started with the three chipmakers, allegedly, artificially inflating memory prices, citing a "shortage"—one created because of their alleged, lopsided supply of RAM and SSD to AI companies and data centres. In retail markets, this led to SSD and RAM prices skyrocketing, pulling up prices of computer hardware. GPUs were co-opted by AI companies for their projects—and that seemed to have crossed the line for many a gamer.

"Do your AI thing, do not touch our domain," bellowed 22-year-old Chennai-based gamer Ravi K. He is among the growing community of angry gamers who have a bone to pick with AI companies.

Nvidia is the maker of some of the best GPUs in the world. And for gamers, it means better performance, better benchmarks, framerates, and so on. In fact, the company, along with AMD, was so beloved in the community. That was, until Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, in March last year, declared: "Nvidia is an AI infrastructure company. We're an infrastructure company, not just 'buy chips, sell chips'" Shareholders loved it. US government loved it. Gamers hated it. 

"I remember thinking, this dude is so rich he has lost it," Raghav S from Mumbai recalled. "How can you forget where you came from? Gamers made Nvidia what it is today. AI is a bubble, I feel, but gamers are here to stay." Bubble or not, Jensen Huang's fairytale bubble seemed to have popped with the fresh allegations of possible honeytrapping by a woman suspected to be a spy working for the Chinese government, if we have to go by what the White House revealed.

While the same shareholders who celebrated anything Huang attached the word "AI" to in the past couple of years have turned around to propose a class-action lawsuit accusing both Nvidia and its CEO of misleading shareholders by allegedly concealing the latter's relationship with the woman suspected of having links to Chinese intelligence.

All across the world, gamers have come together to take snarky shots at the Nvidia CEO. "The irony of Jensen Huang memes brought to you by an AI using Nvidia GPUs is not lost on me," wrote a user on Threads.

"Thank you, Jensen, we can finally have those graphics cards," posted another gamer on Twitter. 

On social media, unlike any other matter, gamers are not giving Huang any quarter to defend himself. "He deserves this," Ravi said, "AI company, it seems. Undone because of vanity. Same vanity that made him forget about us gamers."

"If we as a community can make Sony and Nintendo sweat, what do you think we can do to Nvidia. They better give us back the gaming GPUs that we can afford," added Raghav. Both gamers did express that it was regrettable what happened to Lori Huang, Jensen's wife, in the midst of the scandal exploding, but it does not excuse the Nvidia CEO from "getting what he deserved". 

While the internet is being empathetic to Nvidia CEO's legal spouse and family, the chipmaker's stock has tanked close to 5 per cent on the Nasdaq.