NVIDIA Launches Program to Invest in GPGPU Companies

If you’ve been paying attention to the state of the graphics market at all, you are probably well aware that NVIDIA is the biggest and most out-going company when it comes to general purpose computing on the GPU (GPGPU). They’ve been taking it seriously since before anyone else would even talk about it, and as it stands now, there are a few applications on the market that take advantage of their CUDA technology (Badaboom, TPMGEnc, Elcomsoft’s security software, TotalMedia Theater and others).

Because they care so much about GPGPU technology (and they pretty-much have to), the company has announced their “GPU Ventures Program”, one that allows up-and-coming companies a chance at success, as long as their product and technologies are focused on running accelerated on the graphics card. If NVIDIA likes what the company is doing, they’ll consider investing between $500,000 and $5,000,000 to make sure the product happens. It goes without saying, that kind of money is exactly what a company with large dreams needs, and this move also shows just how important GPGPU is to NVIDIA’s future success.

It’s pretty obvious that NVIDIA is going to be looking for developers who are utilizing CUDA, and although that would give NVIDIA an obvious advantage in the market, at least where GPGPU is concerned, there is a total lack of competition right now, until OpenCL becomes a lot more mainstream (OpenCL code would run on all certified GPU products, from any vendor). If you happen to own a company who fits the bill for what NVIDIA is looking for, you can apply on their website.

NVIDIA Corporation, inventor of the GPU, today announced the launch of the GPU Ventures Program, a new global initiative whose aim is to identify, support and invest in early stage companies leveraging the GPU for visual and other computing applications. NVIDIA is also launching the GPU Venture Zone website, a portal to publicly showcase the innovative GPU applications being developed by its ecosystem partners.