If you’re feeling jealous of Nvidia, well, here’s the idea.
In fact, the green-eyed monster is baked into the name of AI chip maker Titan, as it is made up of the Latin word Nvidia, which means “envy”, and the letters NV for “next version”.
The name is meant to evoke the idea of creating products that others envy, and Nvidia’s ( NVDA ) green logo is designed to evoke the phrase — you guessed it — “green with envy.”
And perhaps it’s no surprise that the company that CEO Jensen Huang co-founded in April 1993 with Chris Malachowski and Curtis Prim at a Denny’s restaurant in San Jose, CA, may have stirred some resentment in some circles.
Since that first meeting, when the first business plan for the company was reportedly written on a paper napkin, Nvidia has grown into a multi-trillion dollar company that employs tens of thousands of people and serves hyperscalers such as Amazon ( AMZN ), Meta Platforms ( META ), Alphabet ( META ), and Microsoft LG ( GOO ).
“We’re in every cloud,” Huang said on the earnings call. “We are in every center, we are all over the world.”
“Nvidia is all over the world,” says CEO Jensen Huang. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images ·Fallon/AFP via Getty Images
Not bad, considering Huang once washed dishes for Denny’s, which commemorated the historic event by placing a plaque atop the booth where the company was born and last year offering “Nvidia Breakfast Bytes,” four sausage links wrapped in buttermilk silver dollar pancakes, one of the CEO’s favorites.
But it wasn’t an easy road to pride of place on the Denny’s menu.
More Nvidia:
Nvidia was on the brink of bankruptcy in the mid-1990s after a failed deal with video game giant Sega to make a graphics chip for the Dreamcast, which was incompatible with Microsoft’s DirectX.
Running out of cash, Huang flew to Japan to tell Sega’s CEO that the product wouldn’t work and they had to cancel the deal, while Nvidia needed a final $5 million payment to stay.
Sega paid the remaining funds and allowed them to keep the money, providing a critical six-month lifeline to develop the RIVA 128 chip, which ultimately saved the company.
“Depression is part of the journey. You’ll appreciate the horrible feelings you have when things aren’t going so well. You’ll appreciate them even more when they’re going well,” Huang said, according to Fortune .
The company went public on January 22, 1999 at $12 a share.
Nvidia invested billions in AI research and development over a decade before the AI boom. While others focused on traditional computing, Huang believed that graphics processing chips (GPUs) would be essential for the future of computing.
He also popularized what he calls “Huang’s Law,” which states that GPU performance for AI workloads doubles every two years, far exceeding the traditional, slow pace of Moore’s Law.
Related: Nvidia History: Company Timeline and Facts
Nvidia is now the dominant supplier of high-end GPUs worldwide, with a commanding share of the discrete graphics market.
The company, which has consistently offered quarterly cash dividends since 2014, will join the Dow Jones Industrial Average on November 8, 2024, replacing technology giant Intel ( INTC ) as AI rapidly transforms the semiconductor industry.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT service is built using Nvidia’s GPUs, and the company is a primary driver of technical innovation, graphical fidelity, and performance standards in PC gaming.
RELATED: Goldman Sachs resets Nvidia stock forecast after earnings
Nvidia recently launched its Rubin platform, its next-generation AI computing architecture, which the company said “sets a new standard for building, deploying and securing the world’s largest and most advanced AI systems.”
Major U.S. tech hyperscalers are expected to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on AI-related capital expenditures in the coming years, and Huang has no doubt that Nvidia’s customers will increase their CapEx.
“I’m confident in their cash flow growth,” he said during the earnings call. “We’re now seeing the inflation of agentic AI and the utility of agents around the world and enterprises everywhere. You’re seeing incredible computing demand because of that. This new world of AI, computational revenue.”
Following the latest quarterly report, many analysts voiced their support for Huang’s view after Nvidia beat Wall Street’s earnings expectations.
“Nvidia’s earnings come at an opportune time, as investors have been hungry for confirmation that AI is still a positive story for the stock, and Nvidia’s missed earnings did just that,” said James Demert, chief investment officer at Main Street Research.
“We’re in an AI and technology-led bull market that favors hardware and infrastructure stocks, and Nvidia is at the center of that.”
Related: From startup woes to AI ambitions: How the sales force is rising to the challenge
This story was originally published by The Street on March 4, 2026, where it first appeared in the Technology section. Add TheStreet as a Favorite Source by clicking here.
