NVIDIA GTC26 Berlin Jensen Huang: ‘Nvidia was founded because of Windows’ : US Pioneer Global VC DIFCHQ SFO NYC Singapore – Riyadh Swiss Our Mind

Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang says the world’s most valuable company might not exist without Microsoft (MSFT).

“Nvidia was founded because of Windows,” Huang said Wednesday alongside Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at an event unveiling a laptop that runs on Nvidia’s RTX Spark chip (video above). “If not for Windows, Nvidia wouldn’t have been founded.”

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella shake hands at the Microsoft Windows & Surface event where new on-device AI capabilities for Windows PCs using Nvidia's new RTX Spark chips were announced, in San Francisco, California, US, October 7, 2026. REUTERS/Manuel Orbegozo
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella shake hands at the Microsoft Windows & Surface event where new on-device AI capabilities for Windows PCs using Nvidia’s new RTX Spark chips were announced, in San Francisco, Calif., Oct. 7, 2026. REUTERS/Manuel Orbegozo · REUTERS / REUTERS

Huang detailed how the idea for Nvidia took shape in late 1992, around the time of Windows 3.1, when he and his co-founders imagined a personal computer with 3D graphics that could run games and serve as a design workstation. Nvidia started in 1993.

When Nvidia went public in January 1999, Microsoft, which had gone public in 1986, was worth about $390 billion (roughly $800 billion in today’s dollars), and Nvidia was worth less than $1 billion (roughly $1.2 billion today).

Nvidia first surpassed Microsoft in market value on June 18, 2024, and has remained ahead on every trading day since June 25, 2025.

As of Wednesday's close, Nvidia was worth $5.73 trillion, about $1.8 trillion more than Microsoft's $3.93 trillion.
As of Wednesday’s close, Nvidia was worth $5.73 trillion, about $1.8 trillion more than Microsoft’s $3.93 trillion.

Huang explained that Nvidia evolved alongside Microsoft’s software. Microsoft’s Windows 95 let a graphics chip connect to a PC; DirectX opened those chips to applications; and DirectX 8 marked the point when the two companies co-invented the first programmable GPU.

That work later became CUDA, Nvidia’s software for programming its chips.

Read more: Microsoft debuts Nvidia-powered Surface Laptop Ultra, as it aims for AI market

“If not for Windows, there would be no GeForce,” Huang said. “If no GeForce, CUDA wouldn’t have come to the world.”

Without CUDA, he added, AI pioneers would not have “found a computer to do deep learning.”

At the end of the explanation, Nadella quipped: “Jensen is now going to do a little transfer of market cap back to me.”

“I do that every day,” Huang replied.

Internal AI tools help analyze interview transcripts and draft. Editors reviewed, edited, and fact-checked this post before publication.

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