How Nvidia became a tech powerhouse from gaming chips to AI dominance

Nvidia has grown from a gaming chip maker into a dominant supplier of AI technology, becoming one of the world's most valuable companies with a market capitalisation of about $4.01 trillion as of November 13, 2026. Its chips power advanced AI systems, but US export restrictions on sales to China threaten its access to a major market. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, Nvidia introduced the GPU in 1999 and the CUDA software platform in 2006, which enabled scientific computing. The launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 triggered a surge in demand for its chips, with its share price rising about 14-fold to an October 2026 peak. Nvidia holds over 80 per cent of the high-end AI chip market, aided by its hardware-software ecosystem. The US restricted Nvidia chip exports to China in October 2022, citing military concerns, with rules later tightened to affect products like the H20, resulting in a $4.5 billion charge. Beijing has also imposed its own limits on some sales. Despite competition from AMD, Google and Huawei, Nvidia remains central to global AI infrastructure.