Yeah, it's a very interesting way of announcing a breakup. A very PUBLIC way of doing it as well. Some (most?) employees likely found out via some YouTubers, just before the meeting with the CEO Andrew Han. Or at least that's how it sounded; maybe they found out just before the video embargo was lifted? I mean, I guess he couldn't reasonably invite 20 or 50 publications to a briefing and then expect it not to leak. With only three people in attendance, and perhaps because there was some trust between them, that's a way to control the situation.
But then it goes back to what Steve at GN was saying about there being some discrepancies. EVGA's CEO is basically killing 80% of his business. He won't retire. He won't sell. He won't even do any other GPUs (ie, AMD or Intel) — possibly because he just feels the entire GPU market is set for a major downturn. That's a lot of really odd decisions for a CEO to make that ultimately point to EVGA closing up shop, or at least massively downsizing. And it was all done after the major profits of the past two years were over. Jay said he felt like he spent four hours trying to talk Andrew out of this move. That suggests he also has some major concerns with what's happening.
Personally, I think it's stupid to shut down the GPU division like this and refuse to sell. Even if EVGA was sold off to someone "unethical," that might hurt Andrew Han's feelings or whatever, but hardly anyone really thinks of him when they think of EVGA. It's just a company that does decent graphics cards and some other PC hardware to most of us. Selling the company couldn't possibly be any worse for the current employees AFAICT. Because it looks as though 80% of them will have to find a different job in the near future, and a new owner almost certainly wouldn't be doing anything worse than that.
I don't see how EVGA gets through this without ending up where BFG went. And how much sense would it make for EVGA to continue making PSUs under their current brand? Change the name to EPSU, because there's no longer any VGA. PSUs might have higher margins, but they're also far less exciting and far lower sales compared to GPUs. EVGA was 40% of the US Nvidia market. That's massive. If it made 20% profit off each card sold, compared to 60% profit off each PSU sold, the GPU division still would have brought in far more money.
But this is the decision of the CEO, since EVGA isn't publicly traded. He can do whatever he wants, and right now he apparently wants to spit in Nvidia's face, let the whole world know that he thinks Nvidia is a bad business partner, and take his GPU ball and go home. I don't doubt that it's very hard at times to do business with Nvidia. I guess not doing business at all will be better. Or if EVGA now changes course and decides to start doing AMD or Intel cards, or sells off the company, then maybe this was just a big PR move to get the appropriate buyer or partner or whatever. We'll see.