SiliconBeat

Nvidia said Thursday it plans to eliminate 360 positions worldwide, or about 6.5 percent of its workforce “to allow for continued investment in strategic growth areas.” The layoffs are expected to be completed by the end of its fiscal 2009 third quarter on Oct. 26, according to a regulatory filing late Thursday afternoon. The company expects to record restructuring-related expenses of about $7 million to $10 million.

Nvidia’s board also approved a proposal from its management Read the rest of this entry »

Jen-Hsun Huang, the founder and chief executive officer of graphics chip-maker Nvidia, will donate $30 million to help build a “modern and sustainable destination for education and research” at Stanford’s school of engineering, according to a Stanford press release.

To be called the Jen-Hsun Huang School of Engineering Center, the 130,000-square-foot building is already under construction and expected to be completed Read the rest of this entry »

Nvidia shocked investors Wednesday when it said its profitability in the quarter just ended would be lower than it had previously forecast in early May. The company cited delays in a new multi-chip package product, pricing pressure for its graphics processing products and “end-market weakness around the world”. Investors were not pleased. Read the rest of this entry »

Nvidia filed (some) details of its newly approved Fiscal Year 2009 Variable Compensation Plan with the SEC Monday. Woohoo!

The filing spends a lot of words defining who was eligible to participate, how determinations of Actual Corporate Variable Cash Payments will be made, how Individual Variable Cash Payments will be determined (in theory), and so on. An example:

“Fifty percent (50%) of a Participant’s potential variable cash compensation will be allocated to the achievement of corporate targets (up to a maximum of 200% of the Participant’s corporate target award) and fifty percent (50%) will be allocated to the achievement of individual targets.”

However, our motivation to wade through the verbiage, much less make sense of it, evaporated after we read this one sentence: Read the rest of this entry »

Nvidia said today that its chief financial officer, Marvin Burkett, told the company last week he wants to retire, according to an SEC filing. Burkett, 65, has been with the Santa Clara maker of video graphics chips since 2002. Prior to joining Nvidia Burkett was a financial consultant and served as CFO of Arcot Systems, a security software company. From 1998 to 1999 he served as CEO of Packard Bell NEC.

The bulk of Burkett’s career was spent at Advanced Micro Devices, where over the course of 26 years he worked in a variety of positions including CFO and corporate controller. AMD purchased Nvidia’s arch-rival, ATI, in 2001. In January, AMD started selling a new graphics card designed to boost performance for better computer games and videos.

Burkett will remain with the company until his replacement is found, and “”may continue in some capacity” with the company after that. Which would probably give him more time to vest and exercise any options he’s been granted, especially a grant covering 150,000 shares that were granted in March 2006 at a strike price of $28.74. Those are currently underwater in light of the 42 percent drop in Nvidia’s stock so far this year.