Sega's $5 Million Once Saved Nvidia: Thirty Years Later, Honda's ASIMO Enters the Story
- In the 1990s Sega's $5 million investment rescued a nearly bankrupt Nvidia
- The decision came from Sega president Shoichiro Irimajiri, a former Honda F1 engineer
- Thirty years on, Irimajiri and Jensen Huang reunited to discuss AI and robotics
- Honda's dormant ASIMO expertise could link into Nvidia's robotics platform
- Humanoid robots are the next arena for Japan's manufacturing know-how
Nvidia nearly died in the 1990s, and the rescue came from a Japanese game company. When Nvidia's graphics chip for Sega's console failed, Sega president Shoichiro Irimajiri chose to pay the $5 million anyway and release Nvidia from the contract—money Jensen Huang has repeatedly credited with saving the company. Toyo Keizai reports the two men have now reunited, thirty years later, to talk about AI and robotics.
Irimajiri's résumé is the key: before Sega he was a legendary Honda engineer who designed F1 engines. His career spans machinery, digital entertainment and semiconductors—exactly the three worlds converging in humanoid robotics, which needs engine-grade hardware, game-grade simulation and AI-grade compute.
Honda unveiled ASIMO in 2000 as the world's most advanced bipedal robot, halted development in 2018, and revived the name in 2025 only as a vehicle OS. Nvidia, meanwhile, has built simulation environments and foundation models for humanoids but lacks elite motion-control hardware—precisely Honda's dormant asset.
The stakes: America has platforms, China has manufacturing speed, Japan has decades of precision mechanics it is chronically slow to monetize. Watch for a formal Honda robotics restart or Nvidia partnership, Japanese adoption of Nvidia's humanoid platform, and government robotics budgets. A five-million-dollar favor has compounded for thirty years; collection time may be near.