Nvidia launches GPU Ventures Program to foster startups

The company will invest anywhere from $500,000 to $5 million in startups. Last year, the company invested $5 million in five startups. This year, he said the company will try to expand its investments, which mostly go into seed or first venture capital round investments.

Nvidia is trying to stoke its own product ecosystem today as it launches the GPU Ventures Program to identify, support and in invest in early stage companies.

The investments will focus on GPU (graphics processing unit) applications such as video programs that tap the computing power of the graphics chip. Through Nvidia’s CUDA programming environment, the GPUs can now be used to handle non-graphics computing tasks and software companies are only just beginning to exploit that, said Jeff Herbst, vice president of business development at Nvidia.

Dean Takahashi

Full Story: http://venturebeat.com/2009/03/09/nvidia-launches-gpu-ventures-program-to-foster-startups/