Smilegate Makes Strategic Investment in Dan Houser's Absurd Ventures, Accelerating Its Growth in the Global Gaming Market

Smilegate's deep expertise in Asian markets coupled with Dan Houser and the Absurd Ventures team's creative vision and blockbuster AAA game experience aims to create vast and sustainable global business opportunities

SANTA MONICA, Calif., Dec. 3, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Smilegate today announced that it has made a strategic investment and become a partner in Absurd Ventures, a U.S.-based media and entertainment company founded by Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser. Absurd Ventures was launched by Houser, whose creative direction during his over twenty years at Rockstar Games drove the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption franchises, among others, to collectively sell more than 550 million units worldwide. Through this agreement, Smilegate will have the opportunity to partner on Absurd Ventures' new IP.

Houser creatively oversaw globally successful IPs that are cultural cornerstones and rooted in immersive storytelling. As the creative director and lead writer of Rockstar's biggest games, Houser conceived indelibly rich worldbuilding, captivating and sometimes heart-breaking stories, and created iconic characters like Tommy Vercetti, Arthur Morgan, Trevor Phillips and John Marston to name just a few. Houser's team at Absurd Ventures includes key leaders and talent from his time at Rockstar Games as well as executive game development veterans who worked on Call of Duty, Pokemon Go! and many other AAA franchises. Absurd Ventures is currently at work building a bold new vision with diverse new IP universes across a wide array of mediums, including video games as well as live-action and animated TV and film, audio fiction podcasts, books, comic books and more. While Absurd Ventures' video game projects are in early stages of development, they have in 2024 released a hit audio fiction series set in their science-fiction universe, A BETTER PARADISE, which debuted at #1 on Apple's Fiction charts, and will be introducing their AMERICAN CAPER crime-fiction universe as an original comic book series in 2025. A third IP universe from Absurd Ventures will also be revealed soon.

Smilegate is the creator of the blockbuster franchises "CROSSFIRE", "Lost Ark", and "Epic Seven", that are hugely beloved in the global market. "CROSSFIRE", launched in 2007, is a first-person shooting game and is currently played in more than 80 countries worldwide by approximately 1 billion gamers. Smilegate's flagship MMORPG "Lost Ark", is played in 160 countries by 1..32M concurrent users. Smilegate is steadily solidifying its position as a 'Global IP powerhouse'.

Smilegate and Absurd Ventures will each leverage the strength of the other into new and sustainable business opportunities. Smilegate will benefit from Houser and his team's proven narrative, AAA game and business expertise in the Western market, while Absurd will benefit from Smilegate's expertise in the Asian market. The two companies will pool each other's strengths in areas such as online/live service, given Smilegate's success with CROSSFIRE and Houser and his team's experience overseeing the wildly successful Grand Theft Auto Online.

Dan Houser, Founder of Absurd Ventures, said, "This collaboration with Smilegate was borne from a mutual respect and a philosophical alignment with founder Kwon, and the great passion he and his team bring to making AAA games. We both want to build interesting worlds and new player experiences." 

Joonho Sung, CEO of Smilegate, said, "We are thrilled to collaborate with the developers behind globally renowned series that have millions of fans worldwide. Together with Absurd Ventures, Smilegate aims to deliver games that players across the globe will love. This partnership marks a critical milestone in Smilegate's journey toward becoming a global IP powerhouse."

Smilegate was advised by DLA Piper and Absurd Ventures was advised by Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks, P.C. with respect to the transaction.

About Smilegate: Smilegate is a global game development and publishing company headquartered in South Korea with regional offices in the United States, China, and Japan. Its flagship franchise 'CROSSFIRE,' is one of the largest and most successful franchises in gaming history. It has more than 1 billion registered users to date in PC and mobile platforms and over 8 million concurrent players globally. Its latest project, 'Lost Ark,' is an MMORPG that was released in South Korea in 2018 and was launched in North America and Europe in February, 2021. Lost Ark recorded concurrent players on Steam with over 1.32M. Learn more by visiting Smilegate.com

About Absurd Ventures: Absurd Ventures is an entertainment company creating new IP across all mediums. Absurd Ventures' original properties include the sci-fi thriller universe "A Better Paradise" and the crime fiction universe "American Caper," whose characters, stories and lore are currently being produced and developed for video games, live-action and animated TV and film, fiction podcasts, books, comic books and more. The company has already launched a chart-topping audio fiction series set in the "A Better Paradise" universe and will be debuting an American Caper comics series in 2025. Founded by Dan Houser, Absurd Ventures is headquartered in Santa Monica, with additional studio offices in Marin, CA. 

** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **

Smilegate Makes Strategic Investment in Dan Houser's Absurd Ventures, Accelerating Its Growth in the Global Gaming Market

• Innovative technologies enable retailers to implement intelligent stores at scale to deliver smarter, more responsive shopping experiences
• Industry partners to display production-ready AI solutions for loss prevention, digital twins, AI agents, customer analytics, and more

SAN JOSE, Calif. and NEW YORK, Jan. 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Retail's Big Show -- Super Micro Computer, Inc. (SMCI), a Total IT Solution Provider for AI/ML, HPC, Cloud, Storage, and 5G/Edge, today announced collaboration with technology partners for AI-powered intelligent in-store retail solutions designed to meet increasing customer expectations with scalability, improved productivity and increased profitability.

"AI is reshaping shopping experiences, enabling real-time analysis of video and other data to give retailers actionable insights to optimizing staff efficiency, reducing shrinkage, increasing profits, and avoiding stock-outs," said Charles Liang, president and CEO of Supermicro. "By combining Supermicro's complete and scalable AI platforms with NVIDIA RTX PRO accelerated computing solutions, we're enabling retailers to build intelligent stores that maximize the benefits of AI-driven applications."

According to the latest NVIDIA State of AI in Retail & CPG report, 89% of respondents reported that AI is helping to increase annual revenue, while 95% said it is helping decrease annual costs, highlighting the measurable business impact retailers are already achieving because of AI¹.

For more information, please visit https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/edge/servers

Supermicro Complete and Scalable Edge AI Infrastructure

Retail-centric AI applications require sub-second responsiveness which is only possible, at scale, if data is processed directly at the edge. Supermicro's Edge AI infrastructure enables the deployment of solutions in distributed environments, such as intelligent retail stores and supply chains, to provide a complete solution.

Deploying at the edge presents a myriad of unique challenges in comparison to the data center. Supermicro's broad Edge AI portfolio of products helps customers and partners overcome these challenges while striking the right balance between performance and ROI.

For deployments in harsh environments where conditioned space is not available, the fanless E103 series of products bring AI processing power where it couldn't go before. Supermicro also offers a fanned small form factor E300 series systems with AI capabilities.

When there is a demanding AI workload at the edge, customers and partners can turn to numerous systems capable of holding the latest discrete GPUs for AI acceleration. Ranging from 1U short-depth to larger 4U form factors, solutions can be right-sized to meet the customer's needs by enabling the latest generation of NVIDIA RTX PRO Blackwell series.

Supermicro Intelligent Store Partners

Supermicro is collaborating with ecosystem partners including Everseen, Kinetic Vision, ALLSIDES, LiveX, WobotAI, and Aible, to create intelligent stores that positively impact day-to-day retail operations as well as longer term supply chain management.

• Everseen's Evercheck solution uses Vision AI to help reduce shrink and improve staff productivity and customer experiences. Built on the Everseen Vision AI platform, Evercheck detects, and deters recovery of unwanted behaviors at checkout, helping retailers recover losses and streamline front-of-store operations.

"Everseen has spent years working alongside some of the world's largest retailers, understanding the realities of the store floor and solving loss challenges where they actually happen," said Joe White, CEO of Everseen. "By partnering with Supermicro and leveraging NVIDIA-accelerated computing, Evercheck delivers real-time computer vision at the edge - transforming store activity into intelligence retailers can act on immediately."

• Wobot AI, focused on building Video AI Agents for the physical world, will be demonstrating how the cameras retailers already own can be turned into systems that continuously observe, learn, and produce usable insight. By converting ordinary CCTV infrastructure into autonomous agents that recognize patterns, identify friction, and surface decisions, Wobot's AI Agents enable retailers to improve day-to-day operations with practical and measurable outcomes.

"By working with Supermicro and NVIDIA at the edge, we're able to deploy Video AI Agents in a way that's scalable, reliable, and focused on real-time operational insight—not experimentation," said Will Kelso, President, Revenue & Growth at Wobot AI.

• LiveX AI - "Retail is entering an era where AI agents become the default interaction layer between brands and customers," said Jerry Li, Co-Founder and CEO of LiveX AI. "With NVIDIA's accelerated AI and Supermicro's edge infrastructure, we can deploy a helpful, human-like AI agent directly in physical spaces—such as kiosks or holograms—bringing the speed, intelligence, and continuity of digital experiences into brick-and-mortar environments. This collaboration makes AI agents usable, in real time, where customers actually are."

• • Kinetic Vision and ALLSIDES are bundling their expertise for a True Digital Twin solution designed to develop, test, and optimize supply chain processes, checkout stations, and other complex systems.

"The combination of Supermicro's high reliability optimized infrastructure and NVIDIA's accelerated computing stack gives Kinetic Vision the foundation to innovate at speed. Together, we are helping retailers move from experimentation to production-ready AI solutions that drive measurable operational and customer experience gains," says Jeremy Jarratt, Kinetic Vision CEO.

Franz Tschimben, CEO at ALLSIDES, adds: "Building on the combined strengths of NVIDIA and Supermicro, we deliver a high-fidelity 3D digital twin data layer for AI training that enables retailers to power applications across the entire retail value chain — from training robots with physical AI, to production and production planning, virtual store layouts and consumer feedback systems, and e-commerce integrations — helping drive higher conversion rates, faster decision-making, and greater operational efficiency."

• Supermicro will also feature Superb AI's retail-focused VSS solution, combining Superb AI's proprietary VLM with NVIDIA AI Blueprint components to enable subjective reasoning capabilities, natural-language search, automated incident summarization, and customer behavior insights across store camera networks.
• Aible will highlight its automated agent solution, which analyzes vast amounts of data across millions of patterns to explain changes in retail KPIs, such as the average purchase amount or number of purchases. Aible will also demonstrate how the latest NVIDIA Retail blueprints can be incorporated into agentic solutions that automatically customize customer experiences and optimize retail operations at scale.

Arijit Sengupta, CEO of Aible, adds, "Today's market and labor conditions are constantly changing. Only autonomous agents can understand and adjust to these ever-changing patterns of customer behavior, inventory costs and supply, and labor access at scale. Working with NVIDIA and Supermicro, Aible brings autonomous agents subject to business user review to the retail edge."

These intelligent retail solutions will be demonstrated by Supermicro and its partners at NRF: Retail's Big Show in New York City from January 11-13. To learn more about AI-powered retail applications or Supermicro's AI Infrastructure solutions, visit Supermicro booth #5281 and attend its speaking session featuring PepsiCo and Kinetic Vision. For more details, please visit www.supermicro.com/NRF

¹Source: "NVIDIA State of AI in Retail and CPG" 2026

About Super Micro Computer, Inc.

Supermicro (NASDAQ: SMCI) is a global leader in Application-Optimized Total IT Solutions. Founded and operating in San Jose, California, Supermicro is committed to delivering first to market innovation for Enterprise, Cloud, AI, and 5G Telco/Edge IT Infrastructure. We are a Total IT Solutions provider with server, AI, storage, IoT, switch systems, software, and support services. Supermicro's motherboard, power, and chassis design expertise further enables our development and production, enabling next generation innovation from cloud to edge for our global customers. Our products are designed and manufactured in-house (in the US, Asia, and the Netherlands), leveraging global operations for scale and efficiency and optimized to improve TCO and reduce environmental impact (Green Computing). The award-winning portfolio of Server Building Block Solutions® allows customers to optimize for their exact workload and application by selecting from a broad family of systems built from our flexible and reusable building blocks that support a comprehensive set of form factors, processors, memory, GPUs, storage, networking, power, and cooling solutions (air-conditioned, free air cooling or liquid cooling).

Supermicro, Server Building Block Solutions, and We Keep IT Green are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Super Micro Computer, Inc.

All other brands, names, and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

 

• Innovative technologies enable retailers to implement intelligent stores at scale to deliver smarter, more responsive shopping experiences
• Industry partners to display production-ready AI solutions for loss prevention, digital twins, AI agents, customer analytics, and more

SAN JOSE, Calif. and NEW YORK, Jan. 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Retail's Big Show -- Super Micro Computer, Inc. (SMCI), a Total IT Solution Provider for AI/ML, HPC, Cloud, Storage, and 5G/Edge, today announced collaboration with technology partners for AI-powered intelligent in-store retail solutions designed to meet increasing customer expectations with scalability, improved productivity and increased profitability.

"AI is reshaping shopping experiences, enabling real-time analysis of video and other data to give retailers actionable insights to optimizing staff efficiency, reducing shrinkage, increasing profits, and avoiding stock-outs," said Charles Liang, president and CEO of Supermicro. "By combining Supermicro's complete and scalable AI platforms with NVIDIA RTX PRO accelerated computing solutions, we're enabling retailers to build intelligent stores that maximize the benefits of AI-driven applications."

According to the latest NVIDIA State of AI in Retail & CPG report, 89% of respondents reported that AI is helping to increase annual revenue, while 95% said it is helping decrease annual costs, highlighting the measurable business impact retailers are already achieving because of AI¹.

For more information, please visit https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/edge/servers

Supermicro Complete and Scalable Edge AI Infrastructure

Retail-centric AI applications require sub-second responsiveness which is only possible, at scale, if data is processed directly at the edge. Supermicro's Edge AI infrastructure enables the deployment of solutions in distributed environments, such as intelligent retail stores and supply chains, to provide a complete solution.

Deploying at the edge presents a myriad of unique challenges in comparison to the data center. Supermicro's broad Edge AI portfolio of products helps customers and partners overcome these challenges while striking the right balance between performance and ROI.

For deployments in harsh environments where conditioned space is not available, the fanless E103 series of products bring AI processing power where it couldn't go before. Supermicro also offers a fanned small form factor E300 series systems with AI capabilities.

When there is a demanding AI workload at the edge, customers and partners can turn to numerous systems capable of holding the latest discrete GPUs for AI acceleration. Ranging from 1U short-depth to larger 4U form factors, solutions can be right-sized to meet the customer's needs by enabling the latest generation of NVIDIA RTX PRO Blackwell series.

Supermicro Intelligent Store Partners

Supermicro is collaborating with ecosystem partners including Everseen, Kinetic Vision, ALLSIDES, LiveX, WobotAI, and Aible, to create intelligent stores that positively impact day-to-day retail operations as well as longer term supply chain management.

• Everseen's Evercheck solution uses Vision AI to help reduce shrink and improve staff productivity and customer experiences. Built on the Everseen Vision AI platform, Evercheck detects, and deters recovery of unwanted behaviors at checkout, helping retailers recover losses and streamline front-of-store operations.

"Everseen has spent years working alongside some of the world's largest retailers, understanding the realities of the store floor and solving loss challenges where they actually happen," said Joe White, CEO of Everseen. "By partnering with Supermicro and leveraging NVIDIA-accelerated computing, Evercheck delivers real-time computer vision at the edge - transforming store activity into intelligence retailers can act on immediately."

• Wobot AI, focused on building Video AI Agents for the physical world, will be demonstrating how the cameras retailers already own can be turned into systems that continuously observe, learn, and produce usable insight. By converting ordinary CCTV infrastructure into autonomous agents that recognize patterns, identify friction, and surface decisions, Wobot's AI Agents enable retailers to improve day-to-day operations with practical and measurable outcomes.

"By working with Supermicro and NVIDIA at the edge, we're able to deploy Video AI Agents in a way that's scalable, reliable, and focused on real-time operational insight—not experimentation," said Will Kelso, President, Revenue & Growth at Wobot AI.

• LiveX AI - "Retail is entering an era where AI agents become the default interaction layer between brands and customers," said Jerry Li, Co-Founder and CEO of LiveX AI. "With NVIDIA's accelerated AI and Supermicro's edge infrastructure, we can deploy a helpful, human-like AI agent directly in physical spaces—such as kiosks or holograms—bringing the speed, intelligence, and continuity of digital experiences into brick-and-mortar environments. This collaboration makes AI agents usable, in real time, where customers actually are."

• • Kinetic Vision and ALLSIDES are bundling their expertise for a True Digital Twin solution designed to develop, test, and optimize supply chain processes, checkout stations, and other complex systems.

"The combination of Supermicro's high reliability optimized infrastructure and NVIDIA's accelerated computing stack gives Kinetic Vision the foundation to innovate at speed. Together, we are helping retailers move from experimentation to production-ready AI solutions that drive measurable operational and customer experience gains," says Jeremy Jarratt, Kinetic Vision CEO.

Franz Tschimben, CEO at ALLSIDES, adds: "Building on the combined strengths of NVIDIA and Supermicro, we deliver a high-fidelity 3D digital twin data layer for AI training that enables retailers to power applications across the entire retail value chain — from training robots with physical AI, to production and production planning, virtual store layouts and consumer feedback systems, and e-commerce integrations — helping drive higher conversion rates, faster decision-making, and greater operational efficiency."

• Supermicro will also feature Superb AI's retail-focused VSS solution, combining Superb AI's proprietary VLM with NVIDIA AI Blueprint components to enable subjective reasoning capabilities, natural-language search, automated incident summarization, and customer behavior insights across store camera networks.
• Aible will highlight its automated agent solution, which analyzes vast amounts of data across millions of patterns to explain changes in retail KPIs, such as the average purchase amount or number of purchases. Aible will also demonstrate how the latest NVIDIA Retail blueprints can be incorporated into agentic solutions that automatically customize customer experiences and optimize retail operations at scale.

Arijit Sengupta, CEO of Aible, adds, "Today's market and labor conditions are constantly changing. Only autonomous agents can understand and adjust to these ever-changing patterns of customer behavior, inventory costs and supply, and labor access at scale. Working with NVIDIA and Supermicro, Aible brings autonomous agents subject to business user review to the retail edge."

These intelligent retail solutions will be demonstrated by Supermicro and its partners at NRF: Retail's Big Show in New York City from January 11-13. To learn more about AI-powered retail applications or Supermicro's AI Infrastructure solutions, visit Supermicro booth #5281 and attend its speaking session featuring PepsiCo and Kinetic Vision. For more details, please visit www.supermicro.com/NRF

¹Source: "NVIDIA State of AI in Retail and CPG" 2026

About Super Micro Computer, Inc.

Supermicro (NASDAQ: SMCI) is a global leader in Application-Optimized Total IT Solutions. Founded and operating in San Jose, California, Supermicro is committed to delivering first to market innovation for Enterprise, Cloud, AI, and 5G Telco/Edge IT Infrastructure. We are a Total IT Solutions provider with server, AI, storage, IoT, switch systems, software, and support services. Supermicro's motherboard, power, and chassis design expertise further enables our development and production, enabling next generation innovation from cloud to edge for our global customers. Our products are designed and manufactured in-house (in the US, Asia, and the Netherlands), leveraging global operations for scale and efficiency and optimized to improve TCO and reduce environmental impact (Green Computing). The award-winning portfolio of Server Building Block Solutions® allows customers to optimize for their exact workload and application by selecting from a broad family of systems built from our flexible and reusable building blocks that support a comprehensive set of form factors, processors, memory, GPUs, storage, networking, power, and cooling solutions (air-conditioned, free air cooling or liquid cooling).

Supermicro, Server Building Block Solutions, and We Keep IT Green are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Super Micro Computer, Inc.

All other brands, names, and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

 

** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **

Supermicro Announces Intelligent In-Store Retail Solutions in Collaboration with a Broad Range of Industry Partners