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Razer was the gaming brand. Maybe you owned one of these mice or Keyboards. Over $1.6 billion in revenue. A $4.4 billion market cap. A huge IPO. Then… they delisted their stock? What happened? As it turns out, Razer's story is wild. They didn't really "crash", something else happened. A Razer finance platform, A Lamborghini partnership, An energy drink brand, And now, AI Holograms. What happened to Razer? Razer's current decisions are even more confusing, when we look back at what they were. Razer helped redefine gaming hardware. It really influenced everything, from RGB lighting
to esports gear, but they also did something else. They pushed the entire industry forward. In 2005, Razer had just emerged from bankruptcy, and two people bought the rights to the brand: Min-Liang Tan and Robert Krakoff. But, these weren't your typical founders. Tan was a lawyer, and Krakoff was actually a professional NFL running back, before he moved into a tech job. And they were eying up a booming industry. After a short decline in 2001, PC sales were growing. 3% growth in 2002, then 27% in 2003. 2005 saw almost 240 million sales. And inside that market was PC gaming. Games like World of Warcraft had just
launched, which made $391 million in 2005 from subscriptions and expansions. Competitive shooters like Counter-Strike were taking off, which required precise aim, and mouse and keyboard, not controller. But, these two just really loved playing video games. In fact, they just wanted to do one thing: Make a really good mouse. [Min-Liang Tan]: "Is there a possibility for us to build a better mouse? All we wanted to do was to be able to compete with the rest of the gamers out there." So their slogan, at least in the beginning, was "For gamers. By gamers." [Min-Liang Tan]: "If you're really designing a product for yourself, you'll design the best product."
This was actually why they bought Razer in the first place. Though they weren't alone. They had just got some pretty hefty funding from Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing and Temasek Holdings. So, they got to work, and after a few iterations, they had it: The DeathAdder. Crafted to fit multiple hand grips, high sensitivity, side buttons, everything was carefully designed for PC gaming. It even had a left-handed version. It looks pretty basic by today's standards, but this thing took off. Professional players and teams started using it, like Team Liquid, or even League of Legends player Faker who won three world championships with the DeathAdder.
To date, this mouse has over 20 million sales. After professionals started using the DeathAdder, and performing very well with it, millions of others jumped on board. Razer was now unstoppable. So they branched out, but here, Razer did something a bit unexpected. You might know this sound. You might even own one! These are mechanical keyboards. They're snappy, responsive, satisfying to type, and are huge in gaming, largely because of Razer. But they didn't invent these mechanical switches, the company Cherry did in the 1980s.
But, many of these keyboards were industrial, and bulky. Not really "gaming". So, in 2010, Razer launched the Blackwidow, and it took off. Some people are still using these keyboards to this day. So Razer kept going. Gaming laptops in 2013. But not bulky, they were sleek, thin, like a MacBook Pro. Then in 2018 came another breakthrough: The Razer Huntsman, with their own optical keyboard switches. It could survive 100 million keystrokes versus Cherry MX's 50 million.
A single key could be pressed 10,000 times a day, for 27 years, before it broke. By this point, Razer had built a genuinely great reputation. Its gear was great, it felt engineered to be great, and their products pushed the industry forward. But also, the brand had this cool, rebellious feel to it. Every major PC game was lining up to partner with Razer. Their products were selling millions of units, and by 2016, they had $390 million in revenue. So it was time for the next step.
They raised $528 million in their IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The stock surged by as much as 42%, it was one of the biggest IPOs of the year. Everything was going great. It seemed like the start of a new chapter… so what went wrong? Right when the company hit its peak… Razer started making some very odd choices. Razer was at the top of their game. But, around this time, they began to make some moves you'd describe as… weird. In 2020 Razer launched its first gaming chair. Razer Iskur. Then in January 2022 they announced a modular gaming desk: Project Sophia
A PC inside the desk, a giant OLED screen, modular parts, full RGB Lighting, all in one. It never came out. The odd part was that they weirdly focused on it being a work-from-home desk? Razer also tried building its own gaming console after acquiring the software assets from Ouya in 2015. It was discontinued the following year. Then in 2018, they bought THX. Yes, that THX. This was to use THX's expertise in audio and visual quality to expand into areas like virtual reality and live streaming. Then, they entered the smartphone market by acquiring Nextbit, leading to the launch of the Razer Phone.
The first smartphone built for gamers, featuring a 120Hz refresh rate (wow) and a 5.7-inch display. It seemed genuinely great for gaming. But after two versions, Razer laid off most of its mobile division staff. Then came RESPAWN. An energy brand for gamers. To be clear, this was originally an April Fools gag, but it turned into a real product line, with Razer even partnering with Mars to produce chewing gum. And there's plenty more. A chair collab between Razer and Panerai, the Italian luxury watchmaker. A collab between Razer and Lamborghini for a $1,299 gaming chair. In 2022 you could buy a pretty good PC for that.
Razer was becoming a premium "lifestyle" brand instead of a product one. It's definitely a way to have higher margins… if you pull it off. But… it gets worse. In 2018, Razer made one of its strangest moves yet. They launched a fintech company. Razer Fintech, an e-wallet service targeting teenagers and millennials in Malaysia. But, something unexpected happened. It… worked? It became one of Southeast Asia's largest offline-to-online payment networks. By 2023 total payment volume was over $6.6 billion. Then Razer decided to make banking… gamer-themed. In 2020, they partnered with Visa to launch the Razer Card.
A prepaid card with cashback rewards and gamified feature The card literally lit up when you paid. It also shut down a year later. But surprisingly, the fintech business survived, and was re-branding into Fiuu in 2024. By this point, fans of Razer were very confused. They still made gaming products, but they seemed distracted with other things. Razer kept asking "Can we?" but never really stopped to ask "Should we?" This made what happened next a whole lot worse. There are all kinds of business stories hiding in plain sight, with a lot to teach us. We cover these stories every week, so subscribe! We're almost at a million too! With all these weird moves, Razer wasn't doing too well.
In early 2019, they were already burning cash, losing around $48 million in just six months. Then, a stroke of luck… well… for Razer at least. COVID-19 hit. With millions of people stuck indoors gaming, demand surged. Just look at that jump. By 2020, Razer finally turned profitable… but just $800,000 on $1.2 billion in revenue. In 2021, things looked much stronger. Profit rose to $43.4 million, while revenue climbed to $1.62 billion on a 33% year-over-year increase. Everything seemed to be going great. But then, they delisted from the stock exchange.
Why go private… were they secretly dying? Razer's stock wasn't really actively trading, meaning very few investors were buying or selling it. Low activity can make a company look smaller than it actually is, even if revenue is growing a ton. Razer's stock price was pretty much flat the entire time. At this point, Razer was valued at around $4.3 billion, though Razer thought they were worth much more. So they pulled the stock. But things only became more difficult from here. By 2024, revenue was essentially the same as 2023, about $708 million, while profit collapsed from $35.4 million to just $3 million,
a drop of more than 90%. Then, Razer pulled its laptops from US stores, one of its biggest products. New US tariffs hit key manufacturing regions like China, Taiwan, and Vietnam, disrupting the supply chain behind its hardware. It just wasn't worth the cost. Then came the memory crisis. DRAM rose 90-95% and NAND flash 55-60% in early 2026, thanks to AI. Even companies like HP noted that memory alone now accounts for nearly 35% of a PC's cost. It's not the best time to be a premium gamer brand, or a company selling to those gamers.
In 2022 Tan said "we saw a deceleration in the growth momentum for our products and services since the second half of 2021 compared to exceptional growth in the prior year; we expect this trend to continue through 2022", It was only getting worse. Razer.com online sales were $297.6M in 2025, down 5-10% from the previous year. 2026 revenue is expected to decline as much as 20-50%. There were macro factors of course, component costs, supply chains, tariffs, but I think there's something bigger. But before we get to that, Razer was ready to make one more bold move. In 2026, Razer jumped into the AI trend with a new idea, a 3D holographic desk companion designed to sit right on your setup. The project, called PROJECT AVA,
uses xAI's Grok technology to basically, from what I can gather… be an AI Esports Coach. Fans weren't really happy. "Razer will do anything except make good companion software for their hardware" "Focusing on making better products and having decent options for people who don't have thousands to drop on PC parts/peripherals/software willy-nilly, thereby ensuring a smaller but much more steady profit stream? Nah, let's get in on that AI grift like everyone else is!" And, to be honest, they're spot on. Razer, to put it simply, got distracted. They had one of the most trusted PC gaming brands. And one based on quality as well! But not anymore.
Razer is now basically a "gaming lifestyle brand". But… many customers don't care about that. They miss when Razer just made great products. " I miss the old Razer build quality" "Am I crazy or did Razer have more "soul" back then?" "Quality was outstanding back then." It's good to have a brand in PC gaming, but people want reliable, high-performance products. I used to actually have a Razer keyboard, and mouse. They were pretty good!
But now, competitors like Logitech, Keychron, Corsair, and ASUS have swallowed their market. They basically did the opposite of Razer: refined, and doubled down. Razer isn't the only brand to lose their way though. Dell was also one of the most reliable and trusted brands, until they released one of the worst laptops in history. Click here to learn the rest of the story.
