Free to follow every thread. No paywall, no dead ends.
Nvidia: the story on HearLore | HearLore
— Ch. 1 · Founding And Early Survival —
Nvidia.
~7 min read · Ch. 1 of 6
On the 5th of April 1993, three engineers named Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem established Nvidia in Santa Clara, California. They had met at a Denny's roadside diner on Berryessa Road in East San Jose during late 1992 to discuss their vision for graphics-based processing. The trio started with just $40,000 in the bank and no official company name until they settled on "Nvidia" derived from the Latin word for envy. Their early years were defined by near-bankruptcy struggles that nearly ended the business before it could take off. In 1996, the company laid off more than half of its employees, reducing headcount from 100 workers down to only 40 people. By August 1997, when the RIVA 128 graphics accelerator finally shipped, Nvidia had enough money left for exactly one month of payroll. The team operated under an unofficial motto stating their company was thirty days from going out of business. A pivotal moment arrived when Sega president Shoichiro Irimajiri visited Huang personally to cancel a contract for the Dreamcast console. Instead of walking away, Irimajiri persuaded Sega management to invest $5 million into the struggling startup. That funding gave them six months to live while they developed their next product line. Without this intervention, the company likely would have collapsed before releasing any major hardware.
The CUDA Revolution
In the early 2000s, Nvidia invested over a billion dollars to develop CUDA, a software platform enabling GPUs to run massively parallel programs. This strategic pivot transformed gaming hardware into the backbone of modern artificial intelligence infrastructure. As of 2025, Nvidia controlled more than 80% of the market for GPUs used in training and deploying AI models. The company also provided chips for over 75% of the world's TOP500 supercomputers. Andrew Ng determined that using Nvidia GPUs could increase the speed of deep learning systems by about 100 times during what researchers called the "big bang" of deep learning in 2009. Google Brain teams utilized these graphics processing units to create neural networks capable of machine learning. In August 2016, Nvidia gifted its first DGX-1 supercomputer to OpenAI to help train larger and more complex AI models. This gift reduced processing time from six days down to just two hours. By March 2024, Nvidia projected that AI-driven infrastructure would drive data center revenue to $1 trillion by 2028. The company developed specialized platforms like Isaac Sim to train robots through simulations mimicking real-world physics. These innovations allowed researchers and scientists to efficiently run high-performance applications across diverse fields including healthcare and autonomous driving.
When was Nvidia founded and who were the founders?
Nvidia was established on the 5th of April 1993 by engineers Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem. The three founders met at a Denny's roadside diner in East San Jose during late 1992 to discuss their vision for graphics-based processing.
How did Nvidia survive its early financial struggles before becoming profitable?
The company survived near-bankruptcy after Sega president Shoichiro Irimajiri persuaded management to invest $5 million into the struggling startup in 1997. This funding provided six months of operational runway that allowed Nvidia to develop its next product line without collapsing.
What role does Nvidia play in modern artificial intelligence infrastructure as of 2025?
As of 2025, Nvidia controlled more than 80% of the market for GPUs used in training and deploying AI models. The company also provided chips for over 75% of the world's TOP500 supercomputers enabling massive parallel program execution.
When did Nvidia reach a market capitalization of $5 trillion and what milestones preceded it?
On the 29th of October 2025, Nvidia became the first entity to hit a market capitalization of $5 trillion. Prior to this milestone the company reached $4 trillion on the 10th of July 2025 and surpassed Microsoft and Apple to become the world's most valuable firm on the 18th of June 2024.
Why was Nvidia sued regarding GeForce GTX 970 specifications and how was the case resolved?
Issues with GeForce GTX 970 specifications emerged when users discovered cards rarely accessed memory beyond the 3.5 GB boundary despite featuring 4 GB total capacity. On the 27th of July 2016, Nvidia agreed to settle class action lawsuits offering $30 refunds for affected purchases while admitting miscommunication about driver updates.
In May 2023, Nvidia crossed $1 trillion in market valuation during trading hours and grew to $1.2 trillion by November of that same year. On the 18th of June 2024, the company became the world's most valuable firm after surpassing Microsoft and Apple with a market capitalization exceeding $3.3 trillion. It took only 180 days for Nvidia to reach $2 trillion from $1 trillion, while Apple and Microsoft each required over 500 days to achieve similar milestones. By the 10th of July 2025, Nvidia closed for the first time with a market cap above $4 trillion, becoming the first company ever to reach this milestone. That figure represented worth greater than all publicly traded companies combined in the United Kingdom. On the 29th of October 2025, the company became the first entity to hit a market capitalization of $5 trillion. As of the 7th of January 2025, Nvidia's $3.66 trillion market cap was worth more than double the combined value of AMD, ARM, Broadcom, and Intel. The company held a 92% share of the discrete desktop and laptop GPU market as of the first quarter of 2025. In February 2024, half of Nvidia employees earned over $228,000 annually, making it Silicon Valley's hottest employer during a period when other tech firms were downsizing. Raytheon James Financial analysts estimated that H100 GPUs sold between $25,000 and $30,000 each, while eBay listings showed individual units costing over $40,000.
Product Evolution And Acquisitions
Nvidia released its first graphics accelerator named NV1 designed to process quadrilateral primitives before shifting focus to triangle-based systems. The GeForce 256 launched in late 1999 introduced onboard transformation and lighting features to consumer-level 3D hardware running at 120 MHz. In May 2016, the company unveiled GTX 1080 and 1070 models based on Pascal microarchitecture using 16 nm manufacturing processes. the 27th of September 2018 marked the release of RTX 2080 GPUs introducing real-time ray tracing capabilities. On the 11th of March 2019, Nvidia announced a deal to buy Mellanox Technologies for $6.9 billion to expand high-performance computing market presence. The company acquired Arm from SoftBank Group for $40 billion in September 2020 but abandoned the transaction due to regulatory challenges by February 2022. In December 2025, CNBC reported Nvidia agreed to buy assets from Groq for $20 billion including non-exclusive licensing agreements. That same month, the firm entered advanced negotiations to acquire AI21 Labs for up to $3 billion as a talent-focused acquisition integrating approximately 200 specialists. By November 2024, Morgan Stanley reported that all Blackwell chip production for 2025 was already sold out before shipping began. The company also purchased SchedMD behind Slurm workload manager software without disclosing financial terms.
Geopolitics And Regulatory Battles
Following United States Department of Commerce regulations placing an embargo on exports to China effective October 2022, Nvidia saw its data center chips added to export control lists. The next month, the company unveiled A800 GPU designed specifically to meet those export control rules while maintaining performance levels. On the 17th of September 2025, Chinese internet regulator Cyberspace Administration ordered companies like ByteDance and Alibaba not to purchase RTX Pro 6000D graphics chips made for the Chinese market. This ban instructed firms to end both testing and orders of the tailored product within days. In August 2025, Nvidia directed suppliers including TSMC and Samsung Electronics to suspend work on H20 processors following similar government directives warning domestic companies against purchasing them. Despite lower raw computational power at 296 TFLOPs compared to H100's 1979 TFLOPs, the H20 demonstrated over 20% faster performance in large language model inference tasks due to architectural optimizations. By June 2024, Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department began antitrust investigations into Nvidia focusing on their influence in AI industry conduct rather than mergers. In May 2025, U.S. senators Jim Banks and Elizabeth Warren criticized a proposed Shanghai facility raising national security concerns warranting serious review. The United States announced permission to export newer H200 chips to China under specified conditions in 2026 after prolonged negotiations.
Controversies And Ethical Debates
Issues with GeForce GTX 970 specifications emerged when users discovered cards rarely accessed memory beyond the 3.5 GB boundary despite featuring 4 GB total capacity. On the 27th of July 2016, Nvidia agreed to settle class action lawsuits offering $30 refunds for affected purchases while admitting miscommunication about driver updates. In 2018, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Nvidia with failing to disclose that cryptomining was a significant element of revenue growth from gaming chip sales. The company paid $5.5 million to settle civil charges without admitting or denying findings regarding misleading investors and analysts. On the 10th of December 2020, Nvidia told YouTube reviewer Steven Walton it would no longer supply GeForce Founders Edition graphics card review units because his channel focused on rasterization instead of ray tracing. Two days later, Senior PR Manager Bryan Del Rizzo apologized stating withholding samples crossed the line and walked back the decision entirely. In January 2026, court filings revealed Nvidia developers contacted shadow library Anna's Archive to evaluate using pirated content for model training management gave green light despite legality concerns. A public dispute erupted in July 2025 between CEO Jensen Huang and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei over AI regulation philosophies where Amodei called Huang's claims an outrageous lie. The controversy highlighted tensions between companies favoring rapid development versus those emphasizing safety measures and regulatory oversight.