The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant

by Tae Kim

Most of the other possibilities on Priem’s list incorporated “NV” as a reference to their first planned chip design. These names included iNVention, eNVironment, and iNVision—the kinds of everyday words that other companies had already co-opted for their own brands, such as a toilet paper company that had trademarked the name “Envision” for its environmentally sustainable product line. Another name was too similar to the brand of a computer-controlled toilet. “These names were all stinky,” Priem said. The last remaining option was “Invidia,” which Priem found by looking up the Latin word for envy—in a sense, another callback to their work on the GX, when he and Malachowsky believed that their rivals, both within and beyond Sun, had envied their success. “We dropped the ‘I’ and went with NVidia to honor the NV1 chip we were developing,” said Priem, “and secretly hoped that someday Nvidia would be something that would be envied.”