Tragedy struck the gaming industry recently as Shengchang Chiang (also known as Charles Chiang) died on July 7 after falling from the seventh floor of an MSI building in Taipei, according to Taiwanese news site Liberty Times. Chiang was the CEO of MSI, a Taiwanese technology corporation founded in 1986 known for their wide variety of high-quality laptops, desktops, motherboards, and other gaming components. Chiang studied at Jiaotong University’s Institute of Electronics before joining MSI in 1999 as their Vice President of Engineering. He went on to become General Manager of the Desktop Platform Business Division in 2010 before being appointed CEO in January 2019.
As CEO, Chiang had seen MSI through the development of NVIDIA GeForce RTX and Ryzen-based motherboards and computers, like the massively powerful MSI GT76 Titan. He also led the release of MSI’s line of workstations, laptops designed for content creators that were officially recognized by software firms like Adobe. Under Chiang, MSI also released the first-ever workstation to utilize NVIDIA’s Quadro RTX 5000 graphics card. He was also known to be vocal about issues in the PC industry, speaking in interviews about things like U.S. tariffs increasing the prices of motherboards and explaining why MSI was moving to focus more on the prosumer market rather than just gaming.
“Having been a part of the company for more than 20 years, he made outstanding contributions and was admired by his colleagues. Mr. Chiang was a respected leader in the MSI family, and helped pave the way for the brand’s success. We are all deeply saddened by the news, and are mourning the loss of Mr. Chiang. He will be deeply missed by the entire team,” an MSI spokesperson told Tom’s Hardware.
Taiwanese news sites such as ETtoday and Liberty Times seem to think his death was intentional, linking suicide prevention resources at the end of their articles. Nothing has been officially confirmed yet and MSI hasn’t elaborated on the circumstances surrounding Chiang’s death, but it is currently under investigation by Taiwanese authorities.