Nvidia pioneered the GPU industry via its origins as a video game company

By 2024, Nvidia had become one of the world’s most valuable companies

Nvidia started as a graphics chip designer for PCs and consoles. This explainer traces its rise from early GPU innovation to powering AI breakthroughs and fueling the data centers behind today’s biggest tech platforms.

Nvidia was founded in a Denny's restaurant

Nvidia is one of a handful of companies valued at more than $1T. In its early days, the semiconductor company sold GPUs, or graphics processing units, that were used for video games. But in recent years, Nvidia’s chips have been used for crypto and AI. Nvidia has faced several setbacks on its journey, including when the US sanctioned chip exports to China.

Nvidia entered its AI era after learning that its chips could be used in industries beyond gaming

Its semiconductor chips were used in the automotive industry, for data centers, and by crypto miners. And starting in 2006, Nvidia took steps that would ultimately transform it into the AI company it’s known as today. This podcast is the second part of a three-part series diving deep into Nvidia’s company evolution.

Nvidia controls more than four-fifths of the GPU market—but isn't considered a monopoly

Semiconductor company Nvidia has a commanding market share when it comes to graphics processing units. Its competitors include Advanced Micro Devices and Intel, which together account for less than a fifth of the GPU market.

Nvidia's attempted Arm acquisition revealed its hopes of becoming the world's leading AI company

Though Nvidia's acquisition of Arm, another company that designs semiconductors, was ultimately quashed over antitrust concerns, the attempt offered insights into Nvidia's business strategy. Over time, Nvidia has increasingly focused on using its graphics cards to power machine learning, and its platform CUDA is dominant in the sector.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang once saved Nvidia from bankruptcy with a multi-million dollar Hail Mary

Nvidia is now known as one of the top companies contributing to the AI boom, but back in the 1990s, it almost failed. One last-ditch effort conversation that CEO Jensen Huang had with an investor saved the company.

Nvidia's rapid development of GPUs is forcing computing to depart from something called Moore's law

Moore’s law, named after Intel’s cofounder, predicts that the number of transistors on a chip will double every two years. But Nvidia could be outpacing that prediction.

CUDA was Nvidia’s first step into artificial intelligence

CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) is a parallel computing platform that was developed by Nvidia in the mid-2000s. By letting people perform computations in parallel, rather than sequentially, CUDA allowed people to compute large amounts of data quickly. CUDA has been used to build machine-learning models as well.

The hardware powering AI was originally designed for video game graphics processing

Graphics processing units are specialized computer chips that can process multiple data streams in parallel, including pixel colors for a display. Such processing is required to find connections across text data and generate outputs quickly.

Nvidia’s RTX graphics chips support ray tracing, which, the company says, can boost performance in games by 25%

Ray tracing allows developers to add more realistic-looking lighting and shadows to video games, and Nvidia continues to improve the tech in newer chips. Rendering light realistically in video games requires immense computing power, and ray tracing “cheats” the process with a little guesswork.

Nintendo began in 1889 as a playing card company

As a leading video game publisher, Nintendo has contributed to expanding the prevalence of handheld and console technologies for over a century. It has also developed franchise mascots that have appeared in other media, including Mario and Sonic.

Rival companies AMD and Nvidia's CEOs are related

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Nvidia are two of the world's largest manufacturers of processing chips and are fierce competitors. AMD's CEO Lisa Su and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang are actually first cousins once removed, but reportedly don't share a close relationship and didn't even meet until later in life at an industry event.

NVIDIA named several computer chip architectures after Grace Hopper

Unveiled in 2023, the GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip, designed for generative AI applications in data center-scale systems, combines a Grace CPU with a Hopper GPU to create a coherent memory model. This allows the Hopper to access Grace data directly, reducing the need to repeatedly copy data back and forth and vastly improving performance.

Microsoft developed the Xbox to compete with Sony's all-in-one entertainment hardware

The video game console originated as a side project between four DirectX developers, from whom the console's original name, "DirectX Box," derives. These developers sought to counter Sony's PlayStation product line, which they saw as capable of capturing all entertainment markets by playing games, CDs, and DVDs.

'Super Mario Bros.' helped save the video game industry

A 1983 crash left the industry in tatters, desperate for a hit. Nintendo’s focus on a more immersive home experience was realized in “Super Mario Bros.,” bringing the industry from the arcade to the living room. The title eventually sold over 40 million units.

NASA purchased about 60% of all integrated circuits from 1961 to 1965

The US government adopted the new technology to support the development of the Apollo Guidance Computer, which would help astronauts fly to the moon. This drove manufacturing up and costs down, setting the stage for the modern computing era.

X Games emerged during “extreme” marketing boom in the 1990s

Launched as the “Extreme Games” in 1995, the event tapped into a trend from the '90s of brands labeling products and events “extreme” to appeal to youth culture—mirroring marketing in soft drinks, snacks, and video games.

Tencent is the world's largest video game publisher

Despite mainly being known for its 1.4 billion WeChat users, Tencent has quietly expanded its video game empire to include more than 600 investments. These include 100% ownership of Riot Games (maker of League of Legends) and 30% of Epic Games (Fortnite), two of the most popular online video games.

Computex differs from E3, the now-defunct game-focused media expo

Unlike E3’s consumer- and media-driven focus on video games—before the event’s cancellation in 2023—Computex centers on computer and gaming hardware, with a focus on business-to-business meetings and industry partnerships.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

How venture capital firms came to be

The venture capital firm that kickstarted an industry.

In early 2021, GameStop's stock surge brought retail investing into the spotlight

Using platforms like Robinhood, everyday investors became a growing presence in financial markets during the Gamestop short squeeze, revealing the influence retail investors can have on the market.

The streamer no longer just offers TV and movies

As a means of keeping existing subscribers engaged, and to add new users on the margins, the streaming service began releasing its own original video games. Many are based on existing Netflix titles and franchises. See their current offerings here.

Read about the history of gift cards

The first retailer to sell gift cards was Neiman Marcus, but Blockbuster popularized them by selling them via in-store displays in 1994. Starbucks then started selling gift cards that could be reloaded in 2001.

The game 'Counter-Strike' was developed in a dorm room

College student Minh Le designed the game through "modding," effectively building on the code of a preexisting game, the game "Half-Life" in his spare time.

Memes grew alongside the internet

Early memes featured static images with superimposed text, but grew animated with the advent of video-sharing sites like YouTube and GIF-friendly imageboards like 4chan.

A vending machine run with Anthropic's AI went out of business after it was convinced to give away items for free and sell a video game console.

The Nasdaq's 'Magnificent 7' companies are responsible for roughly 40% of the Nasdaq 100 index's gains, while the remaining 93 companies account for the other 60%.

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

The 1987 Nintendo video game 'Stadium Events' isn't known for being particularly fun, but its scarcity has made it a highly sought-after item that has sold for up to $35K at auction.

Venture capital is a form of funding provided to early-stage companies with high growth potential, typically in exchange for an equity (or ownership) stake

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

Radioactive elements can introduce software errors because the ionizing radiation they produce can detach electrons from atoms, and computer code relies on the distribution of electrons.

Watch how deep-sea mining equipment collects and processes polymetallic nodules—metal-rich, potato-shaped rocks—from the ocean floor and creates environmentally damaging plumes of sediments.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

Experimental hantavirus vaccines and therapies, still under development, have long been funded by the US military.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, and became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

Roughly 43 million US borrowers owe roughly $1.7T in student debt, the second-largest source of consumer debt behind mortgages.

The hormonal disorder PCOS was renamed PMOS in 2026, a move designed to improve care and research by shifting the focus to the hormonal causes of this condition that affects 1 in 8 women.

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

One of the most famous portraits ever taken is 'Afghan Girl' (1984) by Steve McCurry, yet the subject Sharbat Gula went much of her life without being identified or benefitting from the image's success.