We’re starting a series of meetings with several key players in the PC ecosystem. Through these often informal exchanges, we hope to give you a different perspective on the workings of the companies that count in the industry. A far cry from the usual, meticulous communications and official powerpoint transcripts, we’d like to bring you a different perspective by talking about what’s going on behind the scenes.
PNY, the most French of the American companies in the sector.
There are brands whose names you know, but you don’t know the extent of their activities. PNY is one of these, despite the fact that the company will soon be celebrating its 40th anniversary. It covers several key sectors of the technology industry, such as graphics cards, SSDs, memory… But it also has a rather original history. PNY Technologies was founded by Gadi Cohen in Brooklyn, New York, in 1985. Initially, the company bought and sold memory chips, with trade initially concentrated between Paris and New York. Now you know the origin of the company’s name. The acronym PNY is a contraction of Paris New York. Since 1994, the company has retained a special connection with France, with its European headquarters located in Mérignac near Bordeaux.
The company’s head office is located in the United States, in Parsippany, New Jersey.
Today, PNY is a major player in memory cards, SSDs, flash cards, micro SDs, USB sticks, graphics cards, GPUs for data centers and NVIDIA Networking Solution products. But if the company is present in the consumer and professional markets, and in solutions for sectors such as automotive, medicine and the cloud, it is above all the result of a company that has never stopped reinventing itself.
Starting out as a supplier of memory modules for major manufacturers, PNY gradually became a seller of memory kits via mass retailers. In 2000, the collapse of ram prices prompted the company to reinvent itself. At the time, the company was a forerunner, selling components in supermarkets, notably Dixons in the UK. It was only natural that Nvidia should turn to PNY to place Geforce in this type of store. Remember that, at the time, the overwhelming majority of sales were made through specialist stores.
From mass-market USB sticks to AI servers
While it’s easy to understand that PNY offers a very wide range of products, it’s the diversity of its customers that is most impressive. By now, most of us have been in contact with the brand’s consumer products. These are sold through traditional distribution networks.
But the company has long been supplying designers, engineers and researchers with cutting-edge NVIDIA® QUADRO® and TESLA™ solutions. It also offers a complete range of GPU servers, certified for all HPC environments, Virtualization and Artificial Intelligence. Given the turmoil and strong growth in this sector, you’ll understand that this requires other services and skills. Here again, PNY’s legitimacy in this sector goes back a long way. We need to take a brief look back to the early 2000s to gain some perspective. At that time, Nvidia took an interest in ELSA, an ailing partner that was manufacturing professional graphics cards using the American company’s chips. While PNY was already busy marketing its Quadro boards, discussions were held between the two partners to help ELSA out of its difficulties. PNY will take on several ELSA employees for the commercial side… In 2024, some of them are still with the company.
This commercial expertise was further honed when, in 2021, PNY Technologies signed a distribution agreement with NVIDIA to become the direct distributor of the entire range of InfiniBand and Ethernet network switches, adapter cards/NICs and cables for resellers in the EMEA region .
2024, a new Geforce ambition
It goes without saying that we can’t talk about this brand without taking a closer look at its range of PC-dedicated products. So we turned our attention to the XLR8 family, the brand’s gaming/performance segment. This family includes Geforce RTXs, SSDs and memory sticks. We’ll be coming back to some of these products in more detail, as PNY has been able to send us a few samples for our own tests. Graphics cards are another important item. Here again, PNY has been present with Geforce for a good number of years. However, astute observers will have noticed that, until very recently, PNY-branded versions were true twins of cards produced by another brand. This situation has changed completely with the arrival of the RTX 40.
PNY now has its own production line and a dedicated board design team based in Taiwan. Much has been said about this production line and team over the last few months. There’s been talk of EVGA’s former production capacity, etc. etc. Obviously, it’s difficult to get official information from the brand on the composition of this team and the details. But if you look hard enough, you’ll find that a lot of the people involved have contributed to the development of graphics cards for market-leading brands.
If the RTX 40 range was the first step in PNY’s emancipation towards unique products, the next generation promises to be a promising one, with some extremely positive signals for enthusiasts of fine hardware, such as an increasingly assumed proximity to Vince Lucido aka KingPin, the father of EVGA’s most emblematic models.
PNY: European headquarters in France
The company’s European headquarters opened in France in 1994, near Bordeaux. This location safeguarded the industrial site of a local IBM subcontractor, which was at the time reviewing its strategy. This initiative not only preserved jobs, but also enabled PNY to develop a strategic European hub far from the more conventional choices such as the Netherlands or the UK, often favored by players in the technology sector.
Far from being a simple “office”, the local structure has taken on a significant dimension in the Group’s strategy. On these premises, teams have developed skills such as final assembly of certain products, packaging design for other countries, pre-sales support and after-sales technical management.
When you need to deal with a problem with your equipment, it’s a Mérignac technician you’ll be dealing with. In 2024, almost 120 people will be working at this site.
