NVIDIA, founded in 1993 as a graphics-chip designer, became central to the market-cap boom surrounding generative AI.
NVIDIA was established by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem. Its early products targeted computer graphics, especially 3D gaming. The company later developed GPUs and software that could perform many calculations in parallel, a capability that proved valuable for scientific computing and machine learning.
The rapid spread of generative AI increased demand for data-center accelerators. NVIDIA's hardware, networking products, and CUDA programming platform made it a major supplier to companies building large AI systems. Investors responded by assigning the company a much higher market capitalization.
NVIDIA is sometimes confused with a computer manufacturer because its chips appear in many systems. It primarily designs semiconductors and software while relying on manufacturing partners for fabrication. Its market value therefore reflects technology design, intellectual property, expected demand, and earnings prospects.