CES is in full swing in Las Vegas and the 2025 edition was an opportunity for Nvidia to reaffirm its ambition. Graphics cards, AI, robots, supercomputers… the company is thinking big! But did you know that it all started in a Californian fast food restaurant for this electronics giant?
Nvidia has clearly been the attraction of CES in Las Vegas this year. The enthusiasm was such that some journalists had to wait two hours before entering the conference room located at Mandala Bay, where the green brand’s keynote was held.
On site, the CEO and founder, Jensen Huang, was welcomed to the cheers of an audience impatient to discover the new products of the American manufacturer. By opening the ball of the CES 2025 conferences, Nvidia left its mark on the show and it’s a safe bet that we are facing an entity that risks disrupting our habits in the future. A little crazy when you imagine that in 1993, it was only a distant project…
Three boys in the wind
In 1993, the world of technology was on the cusp of upheaval. While video games dazzle young and old with their beautiful 2D sprites, the idea of perfectly fluid and detailed 3D works seems like a distant imagination. Certainly, the promises are there and certain attempts, such as aerial simulators or Star Wing on Super Nintendo, are crowned with success, but few people have blind confidence in this new technology. They don’t know it yet, but Sony is preparing to reveal its PSX, future PlayStation, while SEGA is preparing, in the greatest secrecy, a revolutionary fighting game called Virtua Fighter. But this year, another upheaval is brewing…
In the suburbs of San Jose, three friends, Jensen Huang, Curtis Priem and Chris Malachowsky meet up at their favorite fast food restaurant (a Denny’s). « We weren’t very good customers. », s’amuse Chris Malachowsky. « We stayed there for four hours and drank ten cups of coffee. » While they have repeatedly remade the world by talking about their work in semiconductors and computing, they are increasingly considering starting their own company. Their goal is simple: they want to boost the graphic quality of video games and they are convinced that 3D represents the future of the media. After a succession of obstacles (not easy to convince loved ones to take on such a challenge), the trio of engineers founded Nvidia on March 5, 1993 in Santa Clara, giving free rein to their desires. This is good, Nvidia comes from the Latin term “Invidia”, from which they removed the i, and which precisely means… envy (and jealousy).
Unfortunately, despite the wishes of the founders, Nvidia is having a very difficult start. While the world of video games and computing is at a crossroads, their very first graphics chip, the famous NV1, was a masterful flop. Despite significant funds obtained from various investors, the company found itself in difficulty even before being able to demonstrate its potential. Worse, it is on the verge of bankruptcy… and it will find its salvation in a company well known to gamers: SEGA.
Saved by SEGA
To understand, a quick return to history is necessary. In 1996, Nvidia was doing badly and SEGA was struggling to impose its Saturn console against a PlayStation which was devastating everything in the West. To counter this emerging hegemony, the president of SEGA, Hayao Nakayama, asks his right-hand man, Shoichiro Irimajiri, to think of a solution. One of them is based on a $5 million contract offered to Nvidia in exchange for work on the future graphics chip for a console. At the time, the market was in turmoil and the reality of one day was no longer that of the next. Technology evolves very quickly and Nvidia quickly understands that these works are in truth a golden prison. Jensen Huang goes to SEGA and spends a long time with Shoichiro Irimajiri, explaining to him that he cannot finish the work he has started or risk going bankrupt. He explains to him that the technology is evolving towards another approach, Reverse Texture Mapping, but that he absolutely needs the money offered by SEGA to undertake this new technological shift. After several days of reflection, Shoichiro Irimajiri agrees and saves Nvidia from bankruptcy.
The rest of the story? Nvidia manages to bounce back and launches a graphics chip on the market, the Riva 128, which will meet with dazzling success and definitively propel the company to the forefront (we imagine, therefore, that it returned the 5 million dollars to SEGA without any problem). Where fate is sometimes fascinating is to think that SEGA then called on 3DFX, a company specializing in 3D accelerator cards and rival of Nvidia. In search of a new machine after the failure of the Saturn, SEGA launched two projects simultaneously: the Blackbelt in the United States, which is based on an IBM processor and a 3DFX graphics chip, and the Katana in Japan, with a Hitachi SH4 and a PowerVR graphics chip. It is the latter which will win the bet and become the Dreamcast. The bottom line in all this is that the work on the Blackbelt, the abandoned machine, will be used to develop a certain Voodoo 2 at 3DFX. Indeed, when embarking on this major project for SEGA, chief engineer Tatsuo Yamamoto will call on ultra-talented engineers from Silicon Valley who will then join 3DFX. And we give it to you in a thousand words: 3DFX will be bought by Nvidia in 2000 and will begin designing the Xbox graphics chip a few months later. Yes, the world of tech is decidedly impenetrable.
Also read – DLSS: understand everything about the Nvidia technology that is revolutionizing video games
Nvidia reigns for twenty years
In 1999, Nvida launches the GeForce 256 on the market and goes public. Valued for tens of millions of dollars, the company is on the rise and manages to survive the years thanks to remarkable visual innovations. Video games are becoming more and more impressive and Nvidia, after its collaboration with Xbox, won the contract to co-develop, with Sony, the graphics processor for the PlayStation 3. In 2007, Jensen Huang and his acolytes embarked on a risky challenge with Cuda, a programming language that uses the power of graphics processors for more than just processing visual data. While the tech world, including investors, is more than skeptical, this computing superpower ultimately serves the interests of a technology that is preparing to disrupt everything: artificial intelligence and intelligent agents. Today, Nvidia is a technology hub and the company is active in all areas: graphics cards, robotics, automobiles, supercomputers, scientific research, manufacturing design, etc.
To date, Nvidia is the third largest stock exchange listing in the world. A certain idea of a success story, no?
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