Nvidia introduced the GeForce 256 in 1999 and became a leading designer of artificial-intelligence chips.
Nvidia was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem. The GeForce 256, released in 1999, was marketed as the world’s first graphics processing unit, or GPU. GPUs were initially associated mainly with computer graphics and video games.
Nvidia’s CUDA platform, introduced in 2006, allowed developers to use its GPUs for general-purpose parallel computing. That capability became highly important for machine learning, whose calculations can be accelerated by performing many operations simultaneously.
Nvidia designs chips and hardware platforms but generally relies on foundries such as TSMC for manufacturing. Its GPUs became central to training and running generative-AI systems, helping drive a dramatic rise in market capitalization. The GeForce gaming brand and Nvidia’s data-center business are related but serve different markets.