At first glance it seems that Nvidia Bad!
But after hearing about this, listening to GN's video on the subject, and thinking about it overnight, it sound more and more that the C suite, and the CEO in particular, are suffering from "delusional small business" syndrome. I've seen it before, from both local companies and former employers, who get pissed at a partner and pull their relationship, often with disasterous consequences.
EVGA has, for the last 3 generations, managed to overbuy GPUs at the tail end of a generation and wipe much of their profit. They did it with the 1000 series, the 2000 series, and now they have done so with the RTX 3000 series. The C-suite at EVGA got greedy, seeing GPU sales, and repeatedly shot themselves in the foot. They claim that nvidia's "abusive relationship" is why they are no longer making GPUs, yet they have no interest in making AMD GPUs. Or intel GPUs. And they stayed as nvidia's star partner for years, despite this behavior. They claim they are not going to lay people off, but they also have no plans to expand their company and just got rid of 80% of their revenue.
That doesn't sound like sane behavior to me. Given the CEO's statements about not wanting to sell the company to the "wrong investors" and wanting to spend more time with his family, yet not wanting to leave the CEO position, it sure sound to me like the CEO wants to retire, but is married to the baby that is his long running business. Rather then train others to lead, he insists on continuing as CEO, and his newest round of business decisions are costing EVGA money and stressing out management, stress they have attached to their supplier, blaming them for EVGA's problems because he doesnt want to admit that it may be time for him to step down and be an advisor.
So much sounds sus. Like, he claims the 3060 is profitable for EVGA, but he is losing "hundreds" on cards like the 3080. You're telling me that when EVGA was selling 3080s for $950 scalped, they were somehow still losing money? Same with cards like the $1200 3080ti, and the $2000 3090ti? And nvidia was limiting profit? After the last 2 years of insane scalping, who believes that? He also talks about how he refuses to compromise designs to save money, which clashes with nvidia's pricing, but EVGA was also the only GPU maker to make 3000 series that blew up when running new world, some due to poor soldering some due to low quality components. Odd that.....
Maybe the reason you are losing money on high end GPUs is you are overbuying at the wrong time in a generation trying to scalp the market, and it backfired on you. Again. Or maybe its procedure. If you need to limit costs on high end cards for profit reasons, well, do you need 5 different PCBs for what are pin compatible GPUs? Make just 1 PCB for the 3080, 3080ti, 3090, and 3090ti. Same with the cooler. Design it around the 3090, with headroom for a future Ti, then use the same cooler on lower end 3080s and 3080tis. And dont bother making money wasters like the k|ngp|n. Do you really need 4 different 3080 cooler and PCB designs? If you are loosing money, when Asus, MSI, and gigabyte are making money, maybe you are spending far too much on R+D for overlapping products. Similarly, why not just make the mid range and low end nvidia cards, and branch out to AMD options like the competition?
Top it off with EVGA having finished RTX 4000 designs, but now they wont make them, so all that cash is down the drain. The CEO talks repeatedly about how he didnt want to "betray" nvidia, but also talks about how nvidia "betrayed" him. Sounds to me the CEO may have gotten something of an ego, being one of the oldest and more prestigous brands of nvidia cards, and got upset that nvidia didnt treat him better then the other AIBs. Yes, nvidia are dicks. They are dicks because they own 80% of GPU sales. They make the lions share of profits, and have for decades. Doesnt mean its right, but you knew, and have known, how nvidia acts, yet never bothered to branch away from them and resisted embracing their competitor despite calls from the community for EVGA designs.
I've seen this same behavior, in the model railroad space, for years, and many a small model company has gone under from the owner being unwilling to treat the business as a business instead of a group of friends that all owe each other. The CEO's actions just dont make sense, they reek of an emotional decision, and if EVGA waits too long to lay off employees or extend their business they could very well fade into irrelevancy.
