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NVIDIA would not exist today if it had not been for a $5,000,000 bailout provided by SEGA in 1995 following NVIDIA's failure to deliver a chip

>In 1996, NVIDIA’s first chip, the NV1, failed disastrously, leaving only six months of cash. Then SEGA executive Shoichiro Irimajiri stepped in with a last-minute investment that kept the company alive, buying enough time for Jensen Huang to rebuild from scratch.

>With Direct3D, Microsoft nearly killed NVIDIA. PC OEMs refused to produce boards with a non-Direct3D compliant chip, and NVIDIA's engineers knew they could not come up with a completely new polygonal 3D accelerator and bring it to market in time. The company retreated from the public interest and was forced to lay off several employees.

>NVIDIA's financial savior came in the form of a video game console, more specifically, a Sega video game console. Through the NV1, NVIDIA had established a strong working relationship with Sega. The chip promoted sales of Saturn accessories and Sega programmers were somewhat familiar with quadratic surfaces after having ported a small number of games for the NV1. Most importantly, Direct3D was a non-issue because many of the Japanese console developers were ready and willing to use the unconventional technology of quadratic surfaces if it brought additional performance.

>Sega funded a significant portion of the research on the NV2 and it is reasonable to suggest that NVIDIA might not exist it its capacity today if it were not for Sega's support of the NV2. Unfortunately, Sega eventually dropped the NV2 to give the Dreamcast a better future through an easier programming environment. Sega ended up going to 3dfx and later to PowerVR for the graphics technology in the Dreamcast