w 37.3707278 n 121.9637389 w 37.3707278 ; 121.9637389 nvidia corporation headquarters at santa clara in 2008 type public traded as nasdaq nvda s & p 500 component industry semiconductors video games consumer electronics founded april 1993 ; 23 years ago 1993 04 founder jen hsun huang chris malachowsky curtis priem headquarters santa clara california u.s. area served worldwide key people jen hsun huang president & ceo products graphics processing units chipsets video game handhelds revenue us 5.01 billion 2015 1 us 4.68 billion 2014 1 operating income us 747 million 2015 1 us 759 million 2014 1 net income us 614 million 2015 1 us 631 million 2014 1 total assets us 7 370 million 2015 1 us 7 201 million 2014 1 total equity us 4 469 million 2015 1 us 4 418 million 2014 1 number of employees 9 200 2 website www.nvidia.com nvidia corporation n v di in vid ee 3 commonly referred to as nvidia stylized as nvidia nvidia or nvidia is an american technology company based in santa clara california . nvidia designs graphics processing units gpus for the gaming market as well as system on a chip units socs for the mobile computing and automotive market . nvidia s primary gpu product line labeled geforce is in direct competition with advanced micro devices amd radeon products . nvidia expanded its presence in the gaming industry with its handheld shield portable shield tablet and shield android tv . since 2014 nvidia has shifted to become a platform company focused on four markets gaming professional visualization data centers and auto . in addition to gpu manufacturing nvidia provides parallel processing capabilities to researchers and scientists that allow them to efficiently run high performance applications . they are deployed in supercomputing sites around the world . 4 5 more recently nvidia has moved into the mobile computing market where it produces tegra mobile processors for smartphones and tablets as well as vehicle navigation and entertainment systems . 6 7 8 in addition to amd its competitors include intel and qualcomm . contents 1 company history 1.1 founders and initial investment 1.2 major releases and acquisitions 2 sales and market trends 3 gpu technology conference 4 product families 5 open source software support 6 see also 7 references 8 external links company history edit the name of the company comes from invidia in roman mythology who corresponds to nemesis . 9 founders and initial investment edit three people co founded nvidia in april 1993 10 11 jen hsun huang ceo as of 2013 a taiwanese born american previously director of coreware at lsi logic and a microprocessor designer at advanced micro devices amd . chris malachowsky an electrical engineer who worked at sun microsystems . curtis priem previously a senior staff engineer and graphics chip designer at sun microsystems . the founders received venture capital funding from sequoia capital . 12 major releases and acquisitions edit this section contains embedded lists that may be better presented using prose . you can help by converting the list or lists to prose if appropriate . editing help is available . august 2015 learn how and when to remove this template message autumn 1999 saw the release of the geforce nv10 most notably introducing on board transformation and lighting t & l to consumer level 3d hardware . running at 120 mhz and featuring four pixel pipelines it implemented advanced video acceleration motion compensation and hardware sub picture alpha blending . the geforce outperformed existing products by a wide margin . due to the success of its products nvidia won the contract to develop the graphics hardware for microsoft s xbox game console which earned nvidia a 200 million advance . however the project drew the time of many of nvidia s best engineers away from other projects . in the short term this did not matter and the geforce2 gts shipped in the summer of 2000 . in 2000 nvidia acquired the intellectual assets of its one time rival 3dfx one of the biggest graphics companies of the mid to late 1990s . 13 in july 2002 nvidia acquired exluna for an undisclosed sum . exluna made software rendering tools and the personnel were merged into the cg project . 14 in august 2003 nvidia acquired mediaq for approximately us 70 million . 15 on april 22 2004 nvidia acquired iready also a provider of high performance tcp ip and iscsi offload solutions . 16 december 2004 saw the announcement that nvidia would assist sony with the design of the graphics processor rsx in the playstation 3 game console . in march 2006 it emerged that nvidia would deliver rsx to sony as an ip core and that sony alone would organize the manufacture of the rsx . under the agreement nvidia would provide ongoing support to port the rsx to sony s fabs of choice sony and toshiba as well as die shrinks to 65 nm . this practice contrasted with nvidia s business arrangement with microsoft in which nvidia managed production and delivery of the xbox gpu through nvidia s usual third party foundry contracts . meanwhile in may 2005 microsoft chose to license a design by ati and to make its own manufacturing arrangements for the xbox 360 graphics hardware as had nintendo for the wii console which succeeded the ati based nintendo gamecube . 17 on december 14 2005 nvidia acquired uli electronics which at the time supplied third party southbridge parts for chipsets to ati nvidia s competitor . 18 in march 2006 nvidia acquired hybrid graphics . 19 in december 2006 nvidia along with its main rival in the graphics industry amd which had acquired ati received subpoenas from the u.s. department of justice regarding possible antitrust violations in the graphics card industry . 20 forbes magazine named nvidia its company of the year for 2007 citing the accomplishments it made during the said period as well as during the previous 5 years . 21 on january 5 2007 nvidia announced that it had completed the acquisition of portalplayer inc. 22 in february 2008 nvidia acquired ageia technologies for an undisclosed sum . ageia developed the physx physics engine hardware and sdk . 23 in april 2009 a court consolidated multiple class action suits into one case titled the nvidia gpu litigation . 24 nvidia agreed to replace faulty chips in or reimburse purchasers who already spent to get their laptop repaired . nvidia also gave replacement laptops to many users in lieu of making a repair . the replacements and payments were not made until the settlement was finalized in 2011 . users were required to show proof of purchase and mail in their original faulty laptop . the chips were present in a number of dell and hp laptops as well as two apple macbook pro models . although the settlement cost nvidia millions of dollars many of the individuals were unhappy with the settlement and multiple websites and blogs reflected this . the website entitled fair nvidia settlement 25 was one such site . on january 10 2011 nvidia signed a six year cross licensing agreement with intel marking the end of all outstanding legal disputes between these two companies . according to the agreement intel agreed to pay nvidia 1.5 billion in licensing fees in five annual installments . 26 on february 15 2011 nvidia announced and demonstrated the first quad core processor for mobile devices at the mobile world congress in barcelona . it was announced that the chip was expected to ship with many tablets to be released in the second half of 2011 27 and the chip dubbed the tegra 3 was released on november 9 2011 . 28 in may 2011 it was announced that nvidia had agreed to acquire icera a baseband chip making company in the uk for 367 million in cash . 29 30 on july 29 2013 nvidia announced that they acquired pgi from stmicroelectronics . on january 6 2013 nvidia introduced at ces 2013 the tegra 4 mobile processor codename wayne containing 72 gpu cores a quad core arm cortex a15 cpu core and lte capability among its features . 31 on february 19 2013 nvidia announced the tegra 4i codename project grey its first fully integrated 4g lte mobile processor featuring 5 times more gpu cores than tegra 3 1080p hd support and nvidia chimera computational photography architecture . 32 on january 6 2014 nvidia introduced at ces 2014 the tegra k1 mobile processor codename logan containing 192 gpu cores and a quad arm cortex a15 mpcore r3 low power companion core 32 bit or dual core project denver 64 bit . as of february 2014 nvidia claims that the tegra k1 outperforms both the xbox 360 and the ps3 hardware . 33 on october 1 2015 nvidia launched its cloud based game streaming service geforce now . owners of the shield family of gaming devices can join the service to stream more than 80 pc games at up to 1080p resolution and 60fps . 34 on may 6 2016 nvidia introduced at dreamhack in austin texas the geforce gtx 1080 and gtx 1070 built on nvidia s pascal architecture . 35 the company also unveiled other features including ansel a new software for in game photography . 36 sales and market trends edit according to a survey conducted by market watch firm jon peddie research 37 nvidia shipped an estimated 33 million graphics chips in the first quarter of 2010 for a market share of 31.5 % . amd and intel shipped an estimated 25.15 million units 24.0 % market share and an estimated 45.49 million units 43.5 % market share respectively . nvidia s year to year growth was 41.9 % . in august 2011 nvidia predicted the growth of its revenues would be 4 % to 6 % instead of 4 % as analysts said . 38 in september 2011 nvidia forecast strong sales for 2013 in the region of 4.75 bn to 5bn which surpasses analysts expectations of 4.45 bn . 39 gpu technology conference edit the gpu technology conference is an annual technical conference started by nvidia in 2009 which focuses on using the gpu to solve computing challenges . 40 in 2015 the conference attracted over 4000 attendees . 41 product families edit the nvidia gtx 1070 video card which uses a 16nm pascal chip and was first released in june 2016 . this article contains content that is written like an advertisement . please help improve it by removing promotional content and inappropriate external links and by adding encyclopedic content written from a neutral point of view . june 2016 learn how and when to remove this template message nvidia s product portfolio includes graphics processors wireless communications processors pc platform motherboard core logic chipsets automotive solutions and digital media player software . some of nvidia s product families are geforce consumer oriented graphics processing products . 42 quadro computer aided design and digital content creation workstation graphics processing products . 43 nvs multi display business graphics solution . 44 tegra a system on a chip series for mobile devices . 45 tesla dedicated general purpose gpu for high end image generation applications in professional and scientific fields . 46 nforce a motherboard chipset created by nvidia for intel celeron pentium and core 2 and amd athlon and duron microprocessors . 47 nvidia grid a set of hardware and services by nvidia for graphics virtualization . 48 nvidia shield a range of gaming hardware including the shield portable shield tablet and most recently the shield android tv nvidia drive automotive solutions a range of hardware and software products for assisting car drivers including the drive px series a high performance computer platform aimed at autonomous driving through deep learning . 49 open source software support edit see also free and open source device drivers graphics mesa 3d and nouveau software until september 23