Nvidia introduced the GeForce 256 in 1999 and later became a major chip designer by market capitalization.
Nvidia announced the GeForce 256 in August 1999 and marketed it as the world’s first graphics processing unit, or GPU. The company’s graphics processors became important in gaming, professional visualization, and eventually data-center computing.
Nvidia was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem. Its CUDA software platform, introduced in 2006, allowed developers to use compatible graphics processors for general-purpose parallel computing rather than only rendering images.
The company’s market value rose sharply as demand grew for chips used in artificial intelligence systems. Nvidia is a fabless semiconductor company: it designs processors and relies on manufacturing partners, rather than operating the large chip foundries that fabricate most of its products.