Nvidia introduced the GeForce 256 in 1999.
Nvidia announced the GeForce 256 in August 1999 and described it as the world's first graphics processing unit, or GPU. The product combined graphics transformation and lighting functions with rendering hardware, helping define a new category of programmable graphics processors.
Nvidia had been founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem. Its graphics chips first became prominent in personal computers and gaming, but the company's CUDA software platform later made its processors useful for scientific computing and artificial intelligence.
The GeForce brand and the broader GPU concept are related but not identical. GeForce 256 was a specific product, while GPU is the general processor category that later became central to machine learning and high-performance computing.