> from a fiduciary standpoint it would be negligent to sacrifice any capacity for higher-margin AI chips to make gaming cards

Corporations do not have a fiduciary duty to seek maximal profits. This is a myth.

They are given wide latitude to decide what's in the best interests of the shareholders. Keeping a less-profitable offering alive just in case the current big offering doesn't pan out in the long term would easily be defensible in court.

It wouldn't even be a challenge. Courts are loathe to question the judgment of directors and executives. The reasoning is obvious: why in the world would a judge have better knowledge of how to run a company than the people whose jobs are to run the company?

You are correct, I should’ve used financial not fiduciary. They make more money selling AI hardware than gaming and it’s a zero-risk transfer because if AI collapses gamers will not “vote with their wallets” and not buy a new card from NVIDIA, and they know it. And I don’t even disagree with them here, if you can make 10-100x more money doing less work, why wouldn’t you?