NVIDIA

NVIDIA Corporation, headquartered in Santa Clara, California, is a leading American multinational technology company. Specializing in software and fabless design, NVIDIA is renowned for its innovative graphics processing units (GPUs), application programming interfaces (APIs) for data science and high-performance computing, and system on a chip units (SoCs) for mobile computing and the automotive market. The company has established itself as a dominant supplier of hardware and software solutions for artificial intelligence.

NVIDIA's professional GPUs are highly regarded in various industries, including architecture, engineering, media and entertainment, automotive, scientific research, and manufacturing design. These powerful GPUs are utilized in workstations to deliver exceptional performance and visual rendering capabilities. Beyond GPU manufacturing, NVIDIA offers CUDA, an API that enables the development of massively parallel programs, which are widely deployed in supercomputing facilities worldwide.

In recent years, NVIDIA has expanded its presence in the mobile computing market by developing Tegra mobile processors for smartphones, tablets, and vehicle navigation and entertainment systems. The company's product portfolio also extends to the gaming industry, where it has introduced handheld game consoles such as the Shield Portable, Shield Tablet, and Shield TV, as well as the GeForce Now cloud gaming service.

In addition to its hardware offerings, NVIDIA develops AI-powered software solutions for audio and video processing, exemplified by products like Nvidia Maxine. The company's GPUs play a vital role in edge-to-cloud computing and supercomputers, driving advancements in various fields by delivering high-performance computing capabilities.

In 2023, Nvidia became the seventh U.S. company to reach a value of over $1 trillion. Its valuation has continued to rise as it became a leader in AI-powered chips for data centers during the AI boom. In June 2024, Nvidia briefly became the world's most valuable public company, surpassing Microsoft with a market value of over $3.3 trillion for one day.

Nvidia was founded on 5 April 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem. Jensen Huang, a Taiwanese-American electrical engineer, had previously worked at LSI Logic and AMD, while Malachowsky and Priem had been engineers at Sun Microsystems. Their collaboration began at a Denny's roadside diner in East San Jose, California, where they discussed the future of computing and agreed that graphics-based processing would be a significant technological breakthrough. This led to the formation of Nvidia, with an initial investment of $40,000 from the founders.

In 1993, Nvidia's focus was on accelerated computing, particularly in the area of graphics. The founders believed that graphics processing could address challenges that general-purpose computing could not. They identified video games as a key application due to their computational demands and market potential. This focus led to their first graphics accelerator, the NV1 - NVIDIA’s first product, which was optimised for quadrilateral primitives rather than the triangular primitives used by competitors. 

Despite these early setbacks, Nvidia persevered. In 1996, the company laid off more than half its workforce and refocused on developing a new graphics accelerator, the RIVA 128, which was optimised for triangle primitives. Released in 1997, the RIVA 128 was a success, allowing Nvidia to generate revenue and continue its product development. This was followed by the release of the RIVA TNT in 1998, which solidified Nvidia's reputation in the graphics industry.

Nvidia went public on 22 January 1999, marking a significant milestone in its growth. That same year, the company released the GeForce 256, the world’s first GPU. The GeForce 256 introduced transformation and lighting (T&L) to consumer-level 3D hardware, greatly enhancing the performance and capabilities of video games and other graphical applications.

Nvidia's success in the gaming industry led to a contract with Microsoft to develop the graphics hardware for the Xbox game console, which earned Nvidia a $200 million advance. This project took many of Nvidia's top engineers away from other initiatives, but the company's strong product pipeline continued with the release of the GeForce2 GTS in 2000.

In December 2000, Nvidia acquired the intellectual assets of 3dfx, a pioneer in 3D graphics technology. This acquisition strengthened Nvidia's position in the market and allowed it to integrate 3dfx's innovations into its own products. The acquisition was finalised in April 2002, and Nvidia continued to grow in both the gaming and professional graphics markets.

In 2001, Nvidia was selected to replace Enron in the S&P 500 stock index, a significant recognition of the company's growing influence. Over the next few years, Nvidia made several strategic acquisitions, including Exluna in 2002, MediaQ in 2003, and iReady in 2004. These acquisitions helped Nvidia expand into new markets, including mobile devices and high-performance networking.

Nvidia's contributions to the gaming industry continued with the development of the PlayStation 3's graphics processor (RSX), in collaboration with Sony. The company's technological advancements were recognised when Forbes named Nvidia its Company of the Year in 2007. Nvidia continued to innovate, introducing the Tegra 3 system-on-a-chip for mobile devices in 2011 and acquiring Icera, a UK-based baseband chip maker.

Nvidia's focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning began to take shape in the early 2010s. In 2012, NVIDIA introduced the Kepler architecture, which contained more than 3 billion transistors, increasing the performance of GPUs more than tenfold. In 2016, the company unveiled its Pascal microarchitecture, which powered the GeForce 10 series GPUs. These products featured advancements in virtual reality rendering and multi-monitor support, further solidifying Nvidia's leadership in graphics technology.

In 2014, with Maxwell GPUs, Nvidia started to require firmware to unlock all graphics card features. Up to now, this state has stayed the same, which makes writing open-source drivers difficult. In April 2016, Nvidia produced the DGX-1 based on an 8 GPU cluster, to improve the ability of users to use deep learning by combining GPUs with integrated deep learning software. It also developed Nvidia Tesla K80 and P100 GPU-based virtual machines, which are available through Google Cloud, which Google installed in November 2016. Microsoft added GPU servers in a preview offering of its N series based on Nvidia's Tesla K80s, each containing 4992 processing cores. Later that year, AWS's P2 instance was produced using up to 16 Nvidia Tesla K80 GPUs. That month Nvidia also partnered with IBM to create a software kit that boosts the AI capabilities of Watson, called IBM PowerAI. Nvidia also offers its own Nvidia Deep Learning software development kit.

Nvidia's AI initiatives extended beyond gaming. In 2017, the company announced a partnership with Toyota to use its AI platform for autonomous vehicles. It also collaborated with Baidu on cloud computing and autonomous driving projects. These partnerships demonstrated Nvidia's growing influence in AI-driven industries.

In May 2018, researchers at the artificial intelligence department of Nvidia realised the possibility that a robot could learn to perform a job simply by observing the person doing the same job. They have created a system that, after a short revision and testing, can already be used to control the universal robots of the next generation. In addition to GPU manufacturing, Nvidia provides parallel processing capabilities to researchers and scientists that allow them to efficiently run high-performance applications.

In 2019, Nvidia acquired Mellanox Technologies for $6.9 billion, expanding its presence in high-performance computing. That same year, Nvidia introduced Minecraft RTX, adding real-time ray tracing to the popular game, further showcasing the company's advancements in graphics technology.

In 2020, Nvidia announced its intention to acquire Arm, a UK-based chip designer, for $40 billion. However, the deal faced regulatory challenges and was ultimately abandoned in 2022. Despite this, Nvidia continued to innovate, launching the Ampere microarchitecture in 2020 and the GeForce 30 series GPUs.

Nvidia's leadership in AI-driven computing continued to grow, particularly in the data centre market. The company's GPUs became critical for running AI applications, leading to high demand from tech giants. Nvidia's market capitalisation exceeded $1 trillion in 2023, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world.

In June 2024, Nvidia briefly overtook Microsoft, for one day, as the world's most valuable publicly traded company, with a market capitalisation exceeding $3.3 trillion. This achievement was driven by the growing demand for Nvidia's AI-focused products, including its H100 GPUs, which were highly sought after by companies developing AI technologies.

Nvidia's success in AI extended beyond hardware. The company partnered with Getty Images to launch a generative AI tool in 2023, using Nvidia's Edify model. This collaboration highlighted Nvidia's role in shaping the future of AI across various industries, from gaming to healthcare.

Nvidia's Inception Program was established to support startups making significant progress in artificial intelligence (AI) and data science. The program recognises award winners at Nvidia's GTC Conference. In May 2017, the program included 1,300 companies. By March 2018, this number had grown to 2,800 startups. As of August 2021, the Inception Program had expanded to over 8,500 members across 90 countries, with a total funding of US$60 billion.

The company is committed to transforming industries and unlocking the full potential of individuals and organizations through its innovative solutions.

At the core of NVIDIA's mission is the advancement of visual computing. The company is dedicated to pushing the boundaries of graphics processing and creating immersive, realistic visual experiences across various platforms and applications. By continuously innovating in this field, NVIDIA aims to deliver unparalleled visual performance and redefine the way we interact with digital content.

NVIDIA's mission is to harness the power of AI to revolutionize fields such as healthcare, autonomous vehicles, robotics, and more, ultimately driving positive societal impact.

NVIDIA's vision is centered around driving the AI and GPU computing revolution, and fundamentally transforming industries by creating technologies that accelerate computing, empower innovation, and shape the future of human experiences.

NVIDIA aims to be the leading force in enabling this AI revolution by providing the most advanced GPU architectures, software frameworks, and AI platforms. The company's vision is to empower developers, researchers, and industries with the tools and technologies needed to leverage the power of AI and GPU computing.

NVIDIA also envisions a future where autonomous machines and robots work alongside humans, augmenting human capabilities and transforming industries. The company believes in the potential of self-driving cars, intelligent robots, and automated systems to revolutionize transportation, healthcare, manufacturing, and more.

Moreover, NVIDIA's vision extends to delivering immersive and interactive virtual experiences. The company sees a future where virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies enable new forms of storytelling, gaming, education, and communication, creating transformative experiences that blur the line between the physical and digital worlds.

NVIDIA's vision goes beyond technological advancements. The company is dedicated to promoting responsible AI development and ensuring that AI technologies are ethically designed, transparent, and accountable. NVIDIA believes in the responsible use of AI to address global challenges and foster societal progress.

Nvidia offers a wide range of products and services designed to meet the needs of various industries, including gaming, professional graphics, artificial intelligence (AI), automotive, and data centres. One of Nvidia's most well-known product families is GeForce, which caters to consumers with high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs) specifically designed for gaming and multimedia applications. The RTX series, which succeeded the GTX and Quadro lines, is aimed at professional visual computing, offering advanced ray-tracing capabilities and AI-enhanced graphics for industries like film production, architecture, and design. The NVIDIA Jetson platform provides embedded systems and AI modules that power intelligent devices at the edge, such as drones, robots, and industrial IoT applications.

In the business sector, Nvidia provides the NVS series, a multi-display graphics processor tailored for business environments requiring reliable and efficient multi-screen setups. For mobile devices, Nvidia developed Tegra, a system-on-a-chip (SoC) that combines computing and graphics power, particularly used in mobile gaming and tablets. In scientific and professional fields, Nvidia's Tesla GPUs have been used for general-purpose high-performance computing, particularly for tasks involving image generation, data analytics, and simulations. The NVIDIA CUDA parallel computing platform and application programming interface (API) enable developers to harness the power of GPUs for massively parallel computing tasks. 

Nvidia's involvement in computing hardware also includes the nForce series, a motherboard chipset that supports both Intel and AMD processors, providing enhanced system performance and integration. The company has also ventured into cloud computing with its GRID product line, which enables graphics virtualisation, allowing users to access powerful GPU resources over the cloud for demanding applications such as video editing and 3D rendering.

In the gaming hardware space, Nvidia developed the Shield product family, which includes the Shield Portable, Shield Tablet, and Shield Android TV, offering high-quality gaming experiences and streaming capabilities. The Drive platform targets the automotive industry, providing hardware and software solutions for autonomous vehicle development. The Drive PX series is a high-performance computer platform designed for deep learning, enabling autonomous driving, while Driveworks is the software platform supporting driverless car operations.

Nvidia's acquisition of Mellanox Technologies led to the creation of BlueField data processing units (DPUs), which are used in data centres to accelerate networking, storage, and security workloads. In 2023, Nvidia released Grace, a data centre CPU designed for high-performance computing and AI applications, further expanding its presence in the server and data centre markets. The company also offers DGX, an enterprise platform for deep learning applications, providing the computational power necessary for AI training and research.

Another platform, Maxine, provides developers with AI-based software for enhancing video conferencing, including features like real-time noise reduction and video quality enhancement. This service is part of Nvidia's broader strategy to integrate AI capabilities into everyday applications, making them more efficient and effective across various sectors.