Nvidia, founded in 1993, designs the graphics processors that helped drive the artificial-intelligence boom.
Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem founded Nvidia in 1993. The company initially focused on graphics-processing units for computer games, but its programmable CUDA platform allowed GPUs to perform large numbers of parallel calculations beyond graphics.
That capability became highly valuable for machine learning. Nvidia’s data-center accelerators, networking products, and software ecosystem made it a leading supplier for training and running artificial-intelligence models. Rapid demand for these products propelled Nvidia into the group of companies with the world’s largest market capitalizations.
Nvidia is a chip designer rather than a traditional semiconductor foundry. TSMC manufactures many of its advanced processors, while Nvidia develops the architectures, systems, and software that customers use. Market capitalization reflects investor expectations about that entire platform, not just the price of an individual graphics card.