NVIDIA explains why it created the Founders Edition

NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang explained to investors why his company decided to create the Founders Edition and how it differs from the reference designs from the previous generations. Huang points out this is a product wholly designed by NVIDIA and referred to it as the "most exquisitely engineered add-in card the world's ever seen, directly from NVIDIA."

This product is intended for enthusiasts who want to buy a VGA card directly from NVIDIA, but Huang expects this will be a niche product as the majority of cards will continue to be made by NVIDIA's add-in board partners.

Jen-Hsun Huang - Co-Founder, President, CEO & Director

The Founders Edition is something we did as a result of demand from the end user base. The Founders Edition is basically designed by – wholly designed by NVIDIA product. A reference design is really not designed to be an end product. It's really designed to be a reference for manufacturers to use as a starting point. But the Founders Edition is designed so that it could be manufactured, it could be marketed, and customers can continue to buy it from us for as long as they desire. Now, our strategy is to support our global network of add-in card partners and we'll continue do that. We gave them – we gave everybody reference designs like we did before.

And in this particular case, we created the Founders Edition so that people who like to buy directly from us, people who like our industrial design, and people who would like the exquisite design and quality that comes with our products that we can do. And so it's designed to be extremely overclockable. It's designed with all the best possible components. And if somebody would like to buy products directly from us, they have the ability to do that.

I expect that the vast majority of the add-in cards will continue to be manufactured by our add-in card partners, and that's our expectation and that's our hope. And I don't expect any dramatic change in the amount of shifting of that. So that's basically it. Founders Edition, the most exquisitely engineered add-in card the world's ever seen, directly from NVIDIA.