Huang says GeForce 3 helped turn NVIDIA from graphics company into computing company, drinks to that
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang used a GeForce 3 anniversary discussion to make a broad claim about the company’s history, saying, “ Without GeForce there would be no CUDA. Without CUDA there would be no AI. Without AI there would be no today.” The remarks frame GeForce not just as a gaming brand, but as the starting point for NVIDIA’s push into general-purpose GPU computing and AI. This is not
NVIDIA says GeForce 3 introduced programmable shaders, and the company has also described that shift as the setup for later stages including pixel shading, compute shading, and real-time ray tracing. In the anniversary drinking session, Huang said GeForce 3 was the point where NVIDIA had to balance acceleration with programmability, which pushed the company toward becoming what he called an accelerated computing company.
RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell and GeForce 3 Ti 500, Source: NVIDIA
CUDA was introduced in 2006 to let developers use GPU throughput for workloads outside graphics APIs, while the company timeline describes it as the point where GPU parallel processing opened to science and research. In the same remarks, he said ray tracing forced NVIDIA to take a step back in raw frame rate and then use AI to move forward again, adding that the company has been working toward neural rendering since the RTX era began in 2018.
Source: NVIDIA
Huang is again placing GeForce and gaming at the root of NVIDIA’s current AI business, even as the company’s public focus is now centered on data center GPUs, CUDA software, and AI infrastructure.
Next week Jensen will take the stage at GTC 2026, one of the most important events for NVIDIA annually. Unfortunately, there’s no GeForce hardware release planned in the near future.
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