Nvidia introduced the GeForce 256 in 1999 and helped popularize the modern GPU.
Nvidia was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem. The company initially concentrated on graphics hardware for personal computers, where specialized processors could render images more efficiently than a central processing unit alone.
Nvidia called the GeForce 256 the world’s first GPU, defining the term as a processor with integrated transformation, lighting, and rendering capabilities. The product helped establish GPU branding in consumer graphics and strengthened Nvidia’s position in gaming hardware.
The company later applied parallel GPU computing to scientific research, data centers, machine learning, and generative artificial intelligence. Those markets helped make Nvidia one of the world’s most valuable companies by market capitalization. The GPU term is sometimes used loosely for any graphics chip, but Nvidia’s 1999 branding was a major milestone in its modern usage.