NVIDIA has received a lot of attention of late. The company stock value has surged about 240% over the past year, and NVIDIA is currently the third largest company in the world in terms of market cap, at about $2.21 trillion. Microsoft and Apple are numbers 1 and 2, with Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta in positions 5, 6 and 7.
On March 18, 2024 NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang delivered the keynote at the NVIDIA GTC. You can watch the recent NVIDIA GTC keynote online at this link, or check out the entire program of the March 18-21 event here.
So let’s take a look at NVIDIA company history, why it is trending so strongly, and, of course, the name choice.
History of NVIDIA
There are many accounts of the history of the company online, with that at Britannica a particularly informative read.
The company was formed in April 1993 by three computer science and engineering professionals, Jensen Huang, Curtis Priem and Chris Malachowsky. The founders brought experience developed at LSI Logic, Sun Microsystems and IBM.
The initial funding was $20 million from venture capital firms including the well-known Sequoia Capital. NVIDIA headquarters are in Santa Clara, California.
The initial focus of the company was in graphics-based computing, especially graphics processing units GPU, and applications in video-rich gaming.
NVIDIA went public in 1999, the same year NVIDIA won the contract for developing hardware for Microsoft Xbox.
In the 2000’s the company moved well beyond gaming, and by 2011 IBM and NVIDIA signed a $1.5 billion cross-licensing agreement.
Parallel Computing Roots
While NVIDIA were far from the first to embrace parallel computing, they did focus on it at a critical time. The roots of parallel computing go back to Charles Babbage with the first architecture specifically for parallel computing was announced in 1957.
NVIDIA made a significant move to parallel processing, particularly for graphical processing, with the release in 2006 of the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA).
The emphasis on parallel computing placed them perfectly for supercomputer applications.
Chat GPT Developed with NVIDIA Chips
OpenAI developed ChatGPT on a supercomputer system powered by 10,000 NVIDIA GPUs. The NamePros Blog covered ChatGPT in OpenAI Dev Day – What Does GPT Store Mean for Domain Names?
By 2023 about 70% of the world’s supercomputers were powered by NVIDIA chips.
Omniverse
NVIDIA technology, including graphics, parallel computing, video and gaming, is well-positioned for the metaverse, and it is not surprising that NVIDIA released their own version of the metaverse in 2020, called the Omniverse.
Powerful Partnerships
If you visit the NVIDIA website, they prominently present some of their partnerships including:
NVIDIA is also at the forefront of digital twin technologies, recently releasing Earth-2 to support state-of-the-art climate modelling and simulations.
Did They Start with No Name?
When NVIDIA started it is widely claimed they were not NVIDIA, and in fact had no name!
They were founded April 5, 1993. Whois shows that the NVIDIA.com domain name was registered not much later, though, on April 20, 1993. So if true they had no name at start, it was not for long.
Interestingly, their domain name is set to expire next month. I am always amazed when some of the most valuable digital assets in the world are not registered years in advance.
Where Did The Name Come From?
If NVIDIA was not a well-known company, I think some in naming would claim it was a poor name, failing the audio test. Also, V is not included in either Western or Chinese premium letter lists.
So how did they come up with the name NVIDIA? Apparently in the early days of the company various products were code named NV+, with NV standing for Next Version.
When they decided they needed a proper name for fund raising, they wanted the ‘NV’ combination to be retained.
A Distinctive Name
Sten Lillieström reminded us of the importance of a distinctive name for a brand, rather than a product or service match.
NVIDIA may hint at one of the aspects of the company, ‘vid’ for ‘video’ perhaps, and starts with NV, but NVIDIA is a unique and distinctive name.
When I did a search on OpenCorporates for ‘nvidia’, although it shows 85 active companies, most, perhaps all, are either branches of NVIDIA or companies that they acquired that handle specific aspects of their operation.
The ‘IA’ ending gives the name a pleasant sound, but also represents the acronym for Artificial Intelligence in French, a nice bonus.
By the way, in researching words that contained ‘nv’, I found that Merriam-Webster has a really useful feature that produces a comprehensive list of names with some letter combination – here is the link to Merriam-Webster list of words containing ‘nv’. None of them start with NV, although there are some nice branding possibilities like anvil, converge, convey, and envy.
The Latin and Roman Roots
NVIDIA is a thoroughly modern company, but their name has roots in the distant past. The Latin term invidia is translated to the English envy. As the Fortune article based on an interview with Jensen Huang points out, the invidia association was clearly intentional:
Invidia was the Roman goddess of envy or jealousy.
The full term invidia is used in 98 active company names, or also known as names, according to OpenCorporates. DotDB show it registered in 51 TLDs, and in longer form in 365. By dropping the I, NVIDIA has a much more distinctive name.
Khalid Moammer wrote an interesting article: Nvidia, How the company got its name & Origins in Roman Mythology.
The corporate logo for NVIDIA suggests an eye and viewing, supposedly a reference to the mythological roots. Interestingly, the logo writes the name with a small n, i.e. nVIDIA. This article discusses how the logo has changed over the years, and also comments on the meaning behind the name.
Another informative article on the NVIDIA name is the Bloomberg article: How Do You Say Nvidia?
Well Defended
According to DotDB, NVIDIA the exact term is registered in 254 extensions, and is also part of about 1600 longer names.
However, I checked a number of these, and all of the key extensions redirect to their main
NVIDIA won the .ai version of their name in a UDRP, with the name transferred in May 2016.
Closing Thoughts
A few thoughts that came to mind as I researched and wrote this article:
Updates:
(1) March 27, 2024 A reference was added to the section on the logo.
(2) March 28, 2024 I added the quotation confirming NV meaning and that the choice of a word based on invidia was intended was deliberate. Sincere thanks to Alan Shiflett, Sr. Director Aftermarket at GoDaddy, who reached out with several helpful references including this one. Since the meaning of NV is now confirmed directly by the NVIDIA CEO, I have eliminated the other possible meanings. The Bloomberg article reference was also added.
On March 18, 2024 NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang delivered the keynote at the NVIDIA GTC. You can watch the recent NVIDIA GTC keynote online at this link, or check out the entire program of the March 18-21 event here.
So let’s take a look at NVIDIA company history, why it is trending so strongly, and, of course, the name choice.
History of NVIDIA
There are many accounts of the history of the company online, with that at Britannica a particularly informative read.
The company was formed in April 1993 by three computer science and engineering professionals, Jensen Huang, Curtis Priem and Chris Malachowsky. The founders brought experience developed at LSI Logic, Sun Microsystems and IBM.
The initial funding was $20 million from venture capital firms including the well-known Sequoia Capital. NVIDIA headquarters are in Santa Clara, California.
The initial focus of the company was in graphics-based computing, especially graphics processing units GPU, and applications in video-rich gaming.
NVIDIA went public in 1999, the same year NVIDIA won the contract for developing hardware for Microsoft Xbox.
In the 2000’s the company moved well beyond gaming, and by 2011 IBM and NVIDIA signed a $1.5 billion cross-licensing agreement.
Parallel Computing Roots
While NVIDIA were far from the first to embrace parallel computing, they did focus on it at a critical time. The roots of parallel computing go back to Charles Babbage with the first architecture specifically for parallel computing was announced in 1957.
NVIDIA made a significant move to parallel processing, particularly for graphical processing, with the release in 2006 of the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA).
The emphasis on parallel computing placed them perfectly for supercomputer applications.
Chat GPT Developed with NVIDIA Chips
OpenAI developed ChatGPT on a supercomputer system powered by 10,000 NVIDIA GPUs. The NamePros Blog covered ChatGPT in OpenAI Dev Day – What Does GPT Store Mean for Domain Names?
By 2023 about 70% of the world’s supercomputers were powered by NVIDIA chips.
Omniverse
NVIDIA technology, including graphics, parallel computing, video and gaming, is well-positioned for the metaverse, and it is not surprising that NVIDIA released their own version of the metaverse in 2020, called the Omniverse.
Powerful Partnerships
If you visit the NVIDIA website, they prominently present some of their partnerships including:
- With Microsoft for enhancements of generative AI
- With Google for scaling AI
- With various partners in edge computing
- With Amazon for advanced generative AI
NVIDIA is also at the forefront of digital twin technologies, recently releasing Earth-2 to support state-of-the-art climate modelling and simulations.
Did They Start with No Name?
When NVIDIA started it is widely claimed they were not NVIDIA, and in fact had no name!
They were founded April 5, 1993. Whois shows that the NVIDIA.com domain name was registered not much later, though, on April 20, 1993. So if true they had no name at start, it was not for long.
Interestingly, their domain name is set to expire next month. I am always amazed when some of the most valuable digital assets in the world are not registered years in advance.
Where Did The Name Come From?
If NVIDIA was not a well-known company, I think some in naming would claim it was a poor name, failing the audio test. Also, V is not included in either Western or Chinese premium letter lists.
So how did they come up with the name NVIDIA? Apparently in the early days of the company various products were code named NV+, with NV standing for Next Version.
When they decided they needed a proper name for fund raising, they wanted the ‘NV’ combination to be retained.
A Distinctive Name
Sten Lillieström reminded us of the importance of a distinctive name for a brand, rather than a product or service match.
NVIDIA may hint at one of the aspects of the company, ‘vid’ for ‘video’ perhaps, and starts with NV, but NVIDIA is a unique and distinctive name.
When I did a search on OpenCorporates for ‘nvidia’, although it shows 85 active companies, most, perhaps all, are either branches of NVIDIA or companies that they acquired that handle specific aspects of their operation.
The ‘IA’ ending gives the name a pleasant sound, but also represents the acronym for Artificial Intelligence in French, a nice bonus.
By the way, in researching words that contained ‘nv’, I found that Merriam-Webster has a really useful feature that produces a comprehensive list of names with some letter combination – here is the link to Merriam-Webster list of words containing ‘nv’. None of them start with NV, although there are some nice branding possibilities like anvil, converge, convey, and envy.
The Latin and Roman Roots
NVIDIA is a thoroughly modern company, but their name has roots in the distant past. The Latin term invidia is translated to the English envy. As the Fortune article based on an interview with Jensen Huang points out, the invidia association was clearly intentional:
Invidia was the Roman goddess of envy or jealousy.
The full term invidia is used in 98 active company names, or also known as names, according to OpenCorporates. DotDB show it registered in 51 TLDs, and in longer form in 365. By dropping the I, NVIDIA has a much more distinctive name.
Khalid Moammer wrote an interesting article: Nvidia, How the company got its name & Origins in Roman Mythology.
The corporate logo for NVIDIA suggests an eye and viewing, supposedly a reference to the mythological roots. Interestingly, the logo writes the name with a small n, i.e. nVIDIA. This article discusses how the logo has changed over the years, and also comments on the meaning behind the name.
Another informative article on the NVIDIA name is the Bloomberg article: How Do You Say Nvidia?
Well Defended
According to DotDB, NVIDIA the exact term is registered in 254 extensions, and is also part of about 1600 longer names.
However, I checked a number of these, and all of the key extensions redirect to their main
nvidia.com. For example, the .co, .ai, .io, .us, .org, .net, .xyz, .tech, and .technology all redirect to their main site.NVIDIA won the .ai version of their name in a UDRP, with the name transferred in May 2016.
Closing Thoughts
A few thoughts that came to mind as I researched and wrote this article:
- There is often an interesting and idiosyncratic history associated with a naming choice, and NVIDIA is no exception.
- Most companies will seek a distinctive name that can be successfully trademarked and defended.
- The name will generally not be a direct service or product match, but may be suggestive of one aspect of their operations.
- Latin, Greek and Roman terms can be an inspiration in naming.
- The audio test is a worthwhile consideration, but there are numerous successful names that do not follow it.
- The sectors in which NVIDIA operates highlight relevant modern technologies with naming opportunities, including parallel computing, graphics acceleration, chip sets, super computing, generative AI, video generation, gaming, metaverse, vehicle computing, edge computing, cloud computing, digital twin technology, mobile computing, and AI on a chip.
- Don’t register distinctive trademarks!
- How do you feel about the association with ‘envy’?
- Do you think a more common word, would have been better?
- What about NVIDIA versus invidia, would you have preferred the full term, if it was available?
Updates:
(1) March 27, 2024 A reference was added to the section on the logo.
(2) March 28, 2024 I added the quotation confirming NV meaning and that the choice of a word based on invidia was intended was deliberate. Sincere thanks to Alan Shiflett, Sr. Director Aftermarket at GoDaddy, who reached out with several helpful references including this one. Since the meaning of NV is now confirmed directly by the NVIDIA CEO, I have eliminated the other possible meanings. The Bloomberg article reference was also added.
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