--- title: "Jensen Huang Says Nvidia Once Faced A Moment It Could 'Vaporize Overnight' Had A Client Not Taken A $5 Million Leap Of Faith" type: "News" locale: "en" url: "https://longbridge.com/en/news/269605718.md" description: "Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang revealed on \"The Joe Rogan Experience\" that Nvidia nearly ran out of cash in the mid-1990s, risking collapse. Sega's Shoichiro Irimajiri saved Nvidia by converting a $5 million payment into equity, allowing Nvidia to pivot and develop the successful RIVA 128 chip. Sega later sold its stake for $15 million, missing out on Nvidia's current multi-trillion-dollar valuation. Nvidia is now a leading GPU supplier for AI projects." datetime: "2025-12-13T18:31:02.000Z" locales: - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/269605718.md) - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/news/269605718.md) - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/269605718.md) --- > Supported Languages: [简体中文](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/269605718.md) | [繁體中文](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/269605718.md) # Jensen Huang Says Nvidia Once Faced A Moment It Could 'Vaporize Overnight' Had A Client Not Taken A $5 Million Leap Of Faith **Nvidia Corp.** (NASDAQ:NVDA) CEO **Jensen Huang** says his company once came so close to running out of cash that it could "vaporize overnight," and survived only because a **Sega** executive gambled $5 million on a failing chip project. ## **Huang Came Clean To Sega Leadership** On an episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience," which aired recently, Huang recalled flying to Japan in the mid-1990s to tell Sega boss **Shoichiro Irimajiri** that Nvidia couldn't deliver the promised graphics chip for the Dreamcast console. "First, the technology that we promised you doesn't work," he said he told Irimajiri. "Second, we shouldn't finish your contract because we'd waste all your money and you would have something that doesn't work. And I recommend you find another partner to build your game console." ## $5 Million Bet That Saved Nvidia Huang then made an audacious plea. He said he warned Irimajiri that without more cash "we'd be dead. We would have vaporized instantly," and asked Sega to convert the last $5 million payment on the contract into an equity investment instead. **See Also: Scott Bessent Slams ‘American Chavista’ Elizabeth Warren For Driving Away Foreign Investment: Says She Is Undermining Trump’s ‘Golden Age’** He told Rogan he admitted to Irimajiri that "it is most likely to be lost," but argued that without the money Nvidia would "be out of business and we would have no chance." Irimajiri took a few days and came back with a simple answer, saying, "We'll do it." That lifeline gave Nvidia time to pivot away from its troubled NV1 chip and build the RIVA 128, a 1997 graphics processor that finally put the company on the map in PC gaming. ## A Turn In Eventual Fortunes Sega later sold its Nvidia stake for about $15 million after the chipmaker went public in 1999, a decision Huang noted would be worth roughly $1 trillion today if the shares had been held, given Nvidia's multi-trillion-dollar valuation in the AI boom. While Sega quit the console business after the Dreamcast's 2001 failure and reinvented itself as a third-party publisher, Nvidia has become the dominant supplier of GPUs powering modern artificial intelligence projects worldwide. NVDA stock currently scores high on Momentum, Growth and Quality in **Benzinga's Edge Stock Rankings**, with a favorable price trend in the long term. Click here for deeper insights into the stock, its peers and competitors. **Read Next:** - **Elon Musk-Led Tesla’s US Sales Fall 23% To Near 4-Year Low In November As Domestic Demand Shrinks Amid Trump’s Anti-EV Stance** _Photo: jamesonwu1972 from Shutterstock_ ### Related Stocks - [NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA.US)](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDA.US.md) - [GraniteShares 2x Long NVDA Daily ETF (NVDL.US)](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDL.US.md) - [XL2CSOPNVDA (07788.HK)](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/07788.HK.md) - [XI2CSOPNVDA (07388.HK)](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/07388.HK.md) - [YieldMax NVDA Option Income Strategy ETF (NVDY.US)](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDY.US.md) - [Direxion Daily NVDA Bear 1X ETF (NVDD.US)](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDD.US.md) - [T-REX 2X Long NVIDIA Daily Target ETF (NVDX.US)](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDX.US.md) - [T-REX 2X Inverse NVIDIA Daily Target ETF (NVDQ.US)](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDQ.US.md) - [Direxion Daily Semicondct Bull 3X ETF (SOXL.US)](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/SOXL.US.md) ## Related News & Research - [Nvidia (NVDA) H100 Prices Surge 40% as New GPUs Fail to Meet Insatiable Demand](https://longbridge.com/en/news/281588202.md) - [Nvidia’s $2 Billion Investment in Marvell: What Kind of Company Is Marvell?](https://longbridge.com/en/news/281372238.md) - [Nvidia invests $2 billion in Marvell, launches AI partnership](https://longbridge.com/en/news/281185701.md) - [Montecito Bank & Trust Trims Position in NVIDIA Corporation $NVDA](https://longbridge.com/en/news/280871722.md) - [Aviz Networks Validates Multi-Tenant Storage Networking for VAST AI Operating System Powering NVIDIA AI Factory Deployments](https://longbridge.com/en/news/281523225.md)