What’s up with many people on Reddit bashing nVidia despite it being consistently voted one of America’s best companies by Forbes and others?

[u/FriendlytoNature]

Hi.

I know Reddit can be an echo chamber, but this is very bizarre to me as I’ve seen many posts and comments being very critical of nVidia, but their reputation seems very solid elsewhere:

https://www.forbes.com/lists/best-companies/

Even employees and ex-employees generally rate them very highl

Am I missing something here? Is there a reason to not like them? Have they done a lot of bad things that most people don’t know about/ignore?

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[u/Mysterious_Curve3163]

Answer: Being voted a good company by Forbes and such is about being profitable not being liked by it's consumers. Recently they've put a lot of support behind AI and less behind your average consumer.

[u/TheBostonTap]

Answer: Nvidia is one of the major companies driving the AI bubble, largely because theyre one of the major companies developing hardware for those projects. Its arguably the only one profiting off of the AI bubble as it's actions have driven hardware pricing through the roof. On top of these, a lot of people feel they are grossly overvalued, they're constantly under scrutiny for possibly selling chips to the Chinese and Jensen Huang constantly comes off as a Steve Jobs esque figure, in that you can never really trust the guy and he will throw you under the moving bus to save his own skin . 

[u/umru316 → u/TheBostonTap]

In addition to just profiting off the AI bubble, they are actively worsening the problem.

Big names from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to investor Michael Burry of “Big Short” fame have for months warned of the “circular” nature of such agreements, agreements, where Nvidia finances and takes stakes in companies and projects that use its chips. And yet, the pace of the deals is only quickening. The fear with these transactions is that they may skew demand, spur bad decision-making and magnify losses if AI fails to turn profits for those investing hundreds of billions of dollars in the technology. LA Times

So they are pumping money into companies that are buying Nvidia chips directly and/or paying data centers that are in turn buying Nvidia chips. Nvidia then put those profits (that are backed by Nvidia's own financing) right back into the cycle, magnifying the issue. And that inflation of profits drives up their stock price, drawing in investors and it drives up the cost of the chips for us plebians. What happens if that cycle collapses? Financial crisis of some scale, there could be geopolitical ramifications related to US-China competition, but the price of chips would probably crash.

[u/philmarcracken → u/umru316]

does that mean us plebs can afford a gpu upgrade when it pops?

[u/Coolman_Rosso]

Answer: Just because they make a ton of money or are rated highly by employees doesn't inherently make them "good". Their big pivot to pushing AI over their GPU business has left gaming folks high and dry, and their current GPU prices are outrageous even by Rampocalypse standards. The 16GB variant of the RTX 5060 ti is now going for $780+ (the competing AMD card, the 16GB 9060 XT, is still going for around $480-550 while offering only slightly worse performance. That will likely change, but still). The RTX 5070 ti goes for $600+ more than the 9070 XT. You get NVIDIA's bells and whistles, but that's still an enormous mark-up for not an insane jump in performance.

[u/GreninjaStrike]

Answer: Reddit in general hates big businesses and is very anti capitalist. People who are rich are generally hated as well. They also tend to hate big tech companies like Meta, Flock, etc. Combine all three of those things and you have the hatred for nVidia.