Nvidia introduced the GeForce 256 in 1999 and later became a market-cap giant.
Nvidia was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem. The company initially focused on graphics-processing hardware for personal computers. Nvidia called the GeForce 256 the world’s first graphics processing unit, a term it used to distinguish a chip that combined several graphics functions on one processor.
The company’s GPUs later became important not only for video games but also for scientific computing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Demand for data-center accelerators helped make Nvidia one of the world’s most valuable listed companies.
Nvidia is often confused with Intel because both design important computing chips. Their businesses differ: Nvidia is especially associated with GPUs and accelerated computing, while Intel has historically been strongly associated with central processing units and x86 personal-computer processors.