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Nvidia is navigating some growing pains as its enterprise software sales team onboards massive clients in highly regulated industries.
Nvidia has been hitting astronomic highs amid the AI boom and even became the first $5 trillion market cap company last month.
At the same time, internal emails sent this summer by senior sales employees in its Worldwide Field Operations — which works with customers to deploy its technology — reveal it’s contending with some hurdles as it tries to tell clients a “comprehensive software story” and sell those products alongside its highly sought-after AI hardware.
“Everyone is hacking their own decks together and we need to come up with one company message,” one of the emails said.
The emails refer to sales of Nvidia AI Enterprise (NVAIE) and other software products, including Run:ai, which helps companies manage GPUs; Omniverse, a platform for simulating 3D worlds; and vGPU, which enables multiple workers to share GPUs.
Nvidia AI Enterprise is a suite of tools that helps clients make their own AI apps. It was launched in 2021 and designed to run with Nvidia’s AI chips and CUDA, a Nvidia software package that allows the chips to handle a wide range of computing tasks. NVAIE’s customer list includes Nasdaq, the IRS, and AT&T.
These internal discussions focus on the sale of those Nvidia business software products — not CUDA.
Nvidia declined to comment.
Nvidia’s software sales forecasts
Nvidia specializes in designing GPUs and other AI hardware, which is the company’s main business, and it doesn’t break out revenues for business software in earnings reports.
While software is a smaller part of its business, it helps the company generate recurring revenue for a wider range of AI products across both hardware and software and deepen customer dependence.
Despite some hiccups, Nvidia is forecasting healthy software sales.
One internal email, sent in July, features a sales chart for the third quarter of fiscal 2026 in North and Latin America that shows stand-alone software is projected to hit 110% of sales targets. Software sold alongside hardware was expected to reach only 39% of its goal.
Overall, software sales forecasts were $78.7 million for the quarter, driven by NVAIE, which was forecast to hit 186% of the target.
A ‘fundamental disconnect’ with Nvidia customers
The July email states Nvidia’s sales partners and account managers need to develop a “comprehensive software story” around NVAIE and other software products. It mentions plans to create a workshop for customers to use NVAIE and other product libraries to plan potential AI ventures.
An email in August detailed the need for additional education — both internally and when negotiating with clients.
“Biggest pain point will be educating [a prospective client’s] procurement and legal teams on what our AI Enterprise software is/isn’t,” the August email reads.
That email also says there is a “fundamental disconnect” between Nvidia and clients’ 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 indemnity obligations, which are Nvidia’s legal responsibility in the event that a client is sued, were other sticking points in negotiations, according to the August email.
Other concerns included requesting higher damages caps — the maximum amount that Nvidia would have to pay if something goes wrong — than Nvidia is comfortable with.
Nvidia is far from alone in contending with uneven AI adoption, as some companies view the white-hot technology as too early to deploy widely, according to a recent Goldman Sachs report.
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