Nvidia introduced the GeForce 256 in 1999 and later became a market-cap giant through accelerated computing.
Nvidia announced the GeForce 256 in August 1999 and marketed it as the world’s first graphics processing unit, or GPU. The product helped establish a category distinct from traditional graphics accelerator cards by integrating more of the graphics pipeline onto one processor.
The company’s GPUs later became important not only for video games but also for scientific computing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Nvidia’s CUDA platform, introduced in 2006, allowed developers to use compatible graphics processors for general-purpose parallel computation.
Nvidia’s rapid market-value growth in the 2020s was driven especially by demand for data-center processors used to train and run AI systems. GeForce refers primarily to Nvidia’s consumer graphics products; its data-center families include Tesla, A100, H100, and newer systems.