Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says the company that became the world’s most valuable might never have existed without Microsoft and its Windows operating system. His account cast the two technology giants as deeply connected from Nvidia’s earliest days.
“Nvidia was founded because of Windows,” Huang said Wednesday. “If not for Windows, Nvidia wouldn’t have been founded.”
Huang made the remarks alongside Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at an event unveiling a laptop powered by Nvidia’s RTX Spark chip. The appearance provided a setting for Huang to revisit the software advances that helped shape Nvidia’s business.
The idea behind Nvidia emerged in late 1992, around the arrival of Windows 3.1. Huang and his cofounders imagined a personal computer capable of delivering 3D graphics for games while also serving as a design workstation.
Nvidia officially started in 1993. From that beginning, the company developed alongside Microsoft’s software, with successive Windows technologies helping graphics chips connect with computers and become accessible to applications.
The financial difference between the companies was enormous when Nvidia went public in January 1999. Microsoft, which had entered public markets in 1986, was worth about $390 billion at the time.
That Microsoft valuation was roughly equivalent to $800 billion in today’s dollars. Nvidia, by comparison, was worth less than $1 billion when it went public, or roughly $1.2 billion in today’s dollars.
Image Credit: Beachside StockThe market standings eventually reversed. Nvidia first surpassed Microsoft in market value on June 18, 2024, marking a striking change from the vast valuation gap that existed at the time of Nvidia’s public debut.
Nvidia has remained ahead of Microsoft on every trading day since June 25, 2025. Huang nevertheless used the event to emphasize Microsoft’s role in the technological path that allowed Nvidia to emerge and expand.
Huang said Windows 95 enabled a graphics chip to connect to a personal computer. That connection represented one part of a broader progression in which Microsoft’s software and Nvidia’s graphics technology evolved together.
Microsoft’s DirectX then opened graphics chips to applications, according to Huang’s explanation. DirectX 8 represented another major point in that relationship, when Microsoft and Nvidia coinvented the first programmable GPU.
The work associated with that programmable GPU later became CUDA, Nvidia’s software for programming its chips. Huang linked the development of CUDA directly to the earlier foundation provided by Windows, DirectX, and Nvidia’s GeForce products.
“If not for Windows, there would be no GeForce,” Huang said. “If no GeForce, CUDA wouldn’t have come to the world.”
Huang carried that sequence into the development of artificial intelligence. Without CUDA, he said, AI pioneers would not have “found a computer to do deep learning.”
His explanation traced a direct line from Windows to GeForce, from GeForce to CUDA, and from CUDA to the computing used for deep learning. The account placed Microsoft’s software at the center of Nvidia’s origin story.
Nadella responded to the generous history with a joke about the companies’ current valuations. “Jensen is now going to do a little transfer of market cap back to me.”
The exchange came as the executives presented a laptop running on Nvidia’s RTX Spark chip. It also highlighted the unusual arc of two companies that began with dramatically different market values before Nvidia eventually moved ahead.
The post disclosed that internal AI tools helped analyze interview transcripts and prepare a draft. Editors reviewed, edited, and fact checked the material before publication.