Nvidia designed the GeForce 256, marketed in 1999 as the first graphics processing unit, or GPU.
Nvidia introduced the GeForce 256 in August 1999. The product combined graphics rendering with hardware transform and lighting functions, allowing Nvidia to promote it as a complete graphics processing unit rather than simply a 3D accelerator.
Nvidia had been founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem. Its early success came from PC graphics, especially gaming, but the company later adapted its parallel-processing technology for scientific computing and artificial intelligence. The term GPU is now used broadly, so descriptions of the GeForce 256 should be understood as a historical marketing milestone rather than a claim that no earlier chip performed any graphics-processing task.