NVIDIA history

The company was founded in 1993 by three American computer scientists, Jen-Hsun Huang, Curtis Priem, and Christopher Malachowsky.

In the second half of 1994 NVIDIA reached an agreement with wafer fabricator SGS-Thomson Microelectronics, a European-based company with plants in France and Italy.

Nvidia's first chip, the NV1, was released in 1995 and cost $10 million to develop--money was raised from Sequoia Capital and Sutter Hill Ventures.

By mid-1996 there were about 30 hardware vendors providing 3D chips to the graphics market, and over the next couple of years it was expected that 3-D would become a standard feature in personal computer systems.

NVIDIA became a major force in the computer gaming industry with the launch of the RIVA series of graphics processors in 1997.

During 1998 it was hit with several patent infringement lawsuits from its competitors, including Silicon Graphics Inc., S3 Inc., and 3dfx Interactive Inc.

Other new products introduced in the final quarter of 1999 included the Aladdin TNT2 for PCs costing less than $1,000.

In the short term this did not matter, and the GeForce2 GTS shipped in the summer of 2000.

The company's stock price rose from $16.50 at the beginning of the year to $66.90 at the end of 2001.

In July 2002, Nvidia acquired Exluna for an undisclosed sum.

In August 2003, Nvidia acquired MediaQ for approximately US$70 million.

In December 2004, it was announced that Nvidia would assist Sony with the design of the graphics processor (RSX) in the PlayStation 3 game console.

In March 2006, Nvidia acquired Hybrid Graphics.

In 2007, NVIDIA was honoured as Company of the Year by Forbes magazine for its rapid growth and success.