Nvidia’s internal emails reveal a ‘fundamental rift’ with major software customers

• Nvidia faces a number of challenges in selling its AI business software.

• Internal emails reveal hurdles with large, highly regulated customers.

• Despite the setbacks, Nvidia predicts healthy software sales.

Nvidia is facing some growing pains as its enterprise software sales team onboards major customers in highly regulated industries.

Nvidia has reached astronomical highs amid the AI ​​boom, even becoming the first company to reach a $5 trillion market cap last month.

At the same time, internal emails sent this summer by senior sales executives at Worldwide Field Operations — which works with customers to deploy its technology — show that it is facing a number of hurdles as it tries to tell customers a “comprehensive software story” and sell those products alongside its highly sought-after AI hardware.

“Everyone is hacking their own decks and we need to come up with one corporate message,” one of the emails said.

The emails relate to sales of Nvidia AI Enterprise (NVAIE) and other software products, including Run:ai, which allows companies to manage GPUs; Omniverse, a platform for simulating 3D worlds; and vGPU, which allows multiple employees to share GPUs.

Nvidia AI Enterprise is a suite of tools that allow customers to create their own AI apps. Launched in 2021, it is designed to work with Nvidia’s AI chips and CUDA, an Nvidia software package that allows the chips to handle a wide range of computing tasks. NVAIE’s client list includes Nasdaq, the IRS and AT&T.

These internal discussions focus on sales of those Nvidia enterprise software products – not CUDA.

Nvidia declined to comment.

Nvidia specializes in designing GPUs and other AI hardware, which is the company’s main business, and does not report enterprise software revenue in its earnings reports.

While software makes up a smaller part of the business, it helps the company generate recurring revenue for a broader range of AI products across both hardware and software, and increase customer dependency.

Despite some hiccups, Nvidia predicts healthy software sales.

One internal email, sent in July, includes a sales chart for the third quarter of fiscal 2026 in North and Latin America, showing that standalone software is expected to hit 110% of sales targets. Software sold alongside hardware was expected to reach only 39% of its target.

Overall, software sales forecasts were $78.7 million for the quarter, driven by NVAIE, which was expected to achieve 186% of target.

The July email states that Nvidia’s sales partners and account managers should develop a “comprehensive software story” around NVAIE and other software products. Plans are mentioned to create a workshop where customers can use NVAIE and other product libraries to plan potential AI ventures.

An August email detailed the need for additional training, both internally and during customer negotiations.

“The biggest pain point will be educating (a potential customer’s) purchasing and legal teams on what our AI Enterprise software is and is not,” the August email reads.

That email also states that there is a “fundamental gap” between Nvidia and customer legal and procurement teams in understanding Nvidia’s software sales processes during negotiations – “particularly within highly regulated industries” such as finance and healthcare.

Data security and indemnification obligations, which are Nvidia’s legal responsibility in the event a customer is taken to court, were other sticking points in the negotiations, the August email said.

Other concerns included asking for higher damages limits – the maximum amount Nvidia would have to pay if something goes wrong – than Nvidia is comfortable with.

Nvidia is certainly not alone in the fight against uneven adoption of AI, as some companies view the lightning-fast technology as too early to deploy on a large scale, according to a recent report from Goldman Sachs.

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