Razer is expanding beyond gaming hardware to pursue an ambitious future in artificial intelligence, with chief executive Min-Liang Tan forecasting that the company could become one of the world’s largest AI hardware businesses.
The Singapore-founded gaming brand is developing AI-powered headsets, virtual companions and tools for creating and testing games. Tan believes the technology could transform both the way games are made and how players experience them.
“AI is going to bring a new renaissance to all of gaming,” Tan said at Razer’s Singapore office. “Today, gaming is an industry worth hundreds of billions, and we believe that AI will make it a trillion-dollar one.”
Razer’s latest AI products include a desktop companion called Razer AVA, which is powered by xAI’s Grok. Users will be able to interact with two virtual personalities: Sumi, a warm and friendly illustrator from Tokyo, and Nico, a more direct freelance engineer based in Los Angeles.
The avatars have distinct personalities and fictional backstories. Sumi is said to own a calico cat and enjoy “cozy gaming”, while Nico is described as a skater. Razer says the system has been given “personality and emotion engines”. AVA is expected to ship in the second half of 2026, although it has not yet been publicly released.
Razer’s AI ambitions
The company has also unveiled the Barracuda AI headset, which includes integrated cameras for computer vision, smart audio processing and compatibility with AI models including ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.
Tan said Razer was taking a “privacy-first” approach to wearable technology, distinguishing its plans from Meta’s. The company’s cameras and AI features are intended to be built into a headset rather than follow the route taken by smart glasses, which have faced concerns over people being recorded without their consent.
Razer is also targeting the development process itself. Last year it launched Razer QA Co-AI, a tool designed to test games, identify performance problems and assess draft bug reports produced by AI.
The initiative comes as game storefronts face a growing supply of titles produced with generative AI. One in five games released on Steam last year disclosed that the technology had been used in their development, an eightfold increase in a year, according to a study of the platform’s catalogue.
A survey by gaming publication PC Gamer found that 120 of roughly 300 games released on Steam during one week in June carried an AI disclosure. A separate study of 53,000 titles found that AI-created games accounted for as much as 90 per cent of the growth in monthly releases, while almost none generated revenue.
Tan acknowledged the risk of a flood of low-quality games, but said Razer’s testing technology could help developers improve their products.
“We don’t like AI slop,” he said. “When you get a huge glut of content created, which is not very good, we can then help them make it better.”
AI is also making it easier for people without technical expertise to create games. Google and Unity, the gaming tools developer, launched an AI game creation platform called Playground on October 7, allowing users to produce games through simple prompts.
Tan said the technology could eventually support far larger virtual environments, with worlds managed by AI. “You’re going to see much larger games where there will be virtual worlds run by AI, and that can mimic or transcend the size of our world at this point in time,” he said.
His confidence in the technology is rooted in a long-held belief that gaming would eventually become a mainstream activity. Tan, a lawyer by training, grew up playing fantasy role-playing games and says he has always regarded himself as a gamer first.
In 1999, while still practising law, he joined forces with Robert Krakoff, an American businessman he had met while gaming online, to develop a gaming mouse. The pair named it the Boomslang, after a fast-striking African snake, and established Razer in 2005.
The company now employs more than 1,500 people and has dual headquarters in Irvine, California, and Singapore’s Queenstown district. Tan said about half of its business comes from the United States, with 30 per cent from Europe and less than 1 per cent from Singapore.
Razer gained a devoted following during its early years, including customers who tattooed its three-headed snake logo on their bodies. Tan said the gaming audience had since changed significantly, moving beyond the predominantly young male players who once defined the hobby.
He said the split between male and female gamers was now roughly even, adding that gaming had developed from a subculture into a much broader activity.
Razer was taken private in 2022 by Tan and private equity firm CVC Capital Partners, ending its five-year listing on Hong Kong’s stock market. Its former ticker, 1337, referred to “leet”, a term associated with gamer slang.
Tan said the move allowed the company to consider AI without the pressure of the quarterly commitments associated with being publicly listed. He is now betting that the technology will help expand gaming further, even as concerns grow over poor-quality AI-generated content.
“AI is going to be inevitable, and the genie is already out of the bottle,” he said. “What we can do is to see how we can effectively harness it.”
