Nvidia became the world's most valuable publicly traded company during a 2024 artificial-intelligence boom.
Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem founded Nvidia in 1993. It first became famous for graphics processing units, or GPUs, used in personal computers and video games. Those chips later proved highly effective for the parallel calculations needed by modern artificial-intelligence systems.
In June 2024, Nvidia briefly overtook Microsoft and Apple in market capitalization as demand for AI data-center hardware surged. Because market caps move with share prices, Nvidia's exact position has changed repeatedly since then.
Nvidia is not the same as a computer manufacturer. It designs chips and software, while outside foundries manufacture many of its leading processors. Its CUDA software platform also helped make its GPUs important in research and commercial AI.