Nvidia introduced the GeForce 256 in 1999 and later became one of the world’s most valuable companies.
Nvidia was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem. It first became widely known for graphics processing units, or GPUs, used in computer games and professional visualization.
The company’s GPUs later became central to artificial-intelligence workloads because they can perform many calculations in parallel. Nvidia’s CUDA software platform helped developers use its hardware for scientific computing and machine learning, broadening the company’s role beyond gaming.
The GeForce 256 is often called the world’s first GPU because Nvidia used that term to describe it. That historical product name should not be confused with the later data-center accelerators that drove Nvidia’s extraordinary market-value growth.