Santa Clara, California based manufacture of graphics-processor technologies - Nvidia has reported that it will commence the GPU Ventures Program on Tuesday. According to Nvidia, the goal of the program is to discover and invest in the early stage companies that use graphics technologies for visual and high-performance computing.

Jeff Herbst, Nvidia's vice president of business development, the worldwide GPU Ventures Program is aimed to fund and guide the startup companies using graphics processors. The program is aimed to invest in start-ups globally, and with the program, the company aims to boost its presence in highly competitive graphics card market.

Nvidia has stated that through its worldwide GPU Ventures Program, it will invest from $500,000 to $5 million to offer marketing support to in the startup companies working on consumer and professional applications ranging from video and image enhancement to scientific discovery, financial analysis and three-dimensional interfaces.

Herbst has explained, "We're looking at companies that are building businesses around the GPU. Whether they be
3D GUIs (graphical user interfaces), Google Earth, which was an investment of ours, virtual worlds, games, artificial intelligence, physics--these types of things," (Nvidia invested in Google Earth, which was originally developed by a company called Keyhole)

"Also companies that use GPUs for things that have nothing to do with visual computing, for example, oil and gas exploration. Crunching massive amounts of seismic data to go find where natural resources are located. Taking jobs that were taking months and changing that to days, hours, minutes," Herbst has said in a phone interview, According to Herbst, "The more applications there are in the world that support the GPU, the bigger the total market there's going to be for people like Nvidia."

With its GPU Ventures Program, Nvidia is looking to build an ecosystem in the same way Intel has built one for its x86 processors during the years.