BlackRock vs NVIDIA: Founders, CEOs and History
BlackRock was founded in 1988 by Larry Fink, Robert S. Kapito, Susan Wagner and is led by Larry Fink. NVIDIA was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, Curtis Priem and is led by Jensen Huang.
Company facts
Founders
BlackRock
Larry Fink
Fink joined First Boston in 1976 and became one of its youngest managing directors, running a mortgage-bond desk that was highly profitable until a 1986 interest-rate move cost it about $100 million.
Robert S. Kapito
Kapito worked alongside Fink at First Boston and joined him in founding BlackRock in 1988.
Susan Wagner
Wagner ran many of the functions that let a small bond shop grow into a global firm, including strategy, corporate development and operations.
Barbara Novick
For roughly BlackRock's first two decades Novick ran its global client business, winning the institutional mandates that funded the firm's early growth.
Ben Golub
Golub led much of the quantitative work behind BlackRock's risk-first approach, building analytics for mortgage prepayment, interest-rate and credit risk that became central to Aladdin.
Hugh Frater
Frater was one of the mortgage specialists who helped launch BlackRock's fixed income business and held senior roles at the firm before leaving.
Ralph Schlosstein
Schlosstein brought corporate finance and public policy experience to the founding team; before Lehman he worked at the US Treasury and on the White House domestic policy staff during the Carter administration.
Keith Anderson
Anderson ran BlackRock's fixed income investing for two decades, the core of the firm until iShares arrived with the 2009 BGI deal, and sat on its executive committee. In 2008 he left to become Chief Investment Officer of Soros Fund Management.
NVIDIA
Jensen Huang
Nvidia possesses a gritty, prescient founding story, rooted entirely in a specific, technical conversation at a well-known American diner, and driven by a CEO who possessed an unshakable conviction in an unproven computational theory.
Chris Malachowsky
Chris Malachowsky co-founded NVIDIA in 1993 and became a central figure in the company's technical foundation.
Curtis Priem
Curtis Priem co-founded NVIDIA in 1993 and served as one of the company's original architects.
CEOs and their tenures
BlackRock
- Larry Fink1988–present
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Fink co-founded BlackRock in 1988 and has run it for its entire history, taking it from a bond boutique to the world's largest asset manager.
Source - Susan Wagner1988–2012
Co-Founder, Chief Operating Officer and Vice Chairman
Co-founder who led strategy, corporate development and operations, including BlackRock's side of the MLIM merger and the BGI acquisition, before retiring from management in 2012 and joining the board.
Source - Robert S. Kapito2007–present
President
Co-founder who long ran BlackRock's Portfolio Management Group across fixed income, equity, liquidity and alternatives before becoming President in 2007, overseeing day-to-day operations.
Source - Rob Goldstein2014–present
Chief Operating Officer
Named COO in 2014 after running BlackRock's global institutional client business; oversees operations across the firm and sits on the management committee created in 2025.
Source - Martin Small2023–present
Chief Financial Officer
CFO since 2023; leads financial planning and investor reporting and has laid out the 2030 targets for private markets, technology and digital asset revenue on earnings calls.
Source - Adebayo Ogunlesi2024–present
Chairman and CEO, Global Infrastructure Partners
Founder of GIP who joined BlackRock's leadership when the deal closed in October 2024; leads its infrastructure business, including the Aligned Data Centers and AES transactions.
Source
NVIDIA
- Jensen Huang1993–present
CEO
Huang has been CEO for more than 33 years, which makes him one of the longest-serving founder-CEOs in the industry. Under him NVIDIA bet early on CUDA and deep learning, bought Mellanox for networking, and moved to a yearly architecture cadence.
Source - Chris Malachowsky1993–2024
Co-Founder
Chris Malachowsky co-founded Nvidia in 1993. As Senior Vice President of Engineering and Operations, he played a critical role in developing the early graphics processing architecture and establishing Nvidia's robust engineering supply chain.
Source - Colette Kress2013–present
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
She has been CFO through NVIDIA's growth from about $4B of annual revenue to $215.9B in FY2026, and she leads its quarterly earnings communication with investors.
Source
Timeline: BlackRock and NVIDIA side by side
1988BlackRock
Founded inside the Blackstone Group
Larry Fink and seven partners start Blackstone Financial Management, a bond and risk-management unit backed by a $5 million credit line from the Blackstone Group.
1992BlackRock
Renamed BlackRock
The business takes the BlackRock name and ends the year managing about $17 billion in assets.
1993NVIDIA
Founding in Santa Clara
Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem founded NVIDIA on April 5, 1993, with a focus on 3D graphics for gaming and multimedia. The founding set the company on a parallel-processing path long before AI infrastructure became the main market.
1994BlackRock
Sold to PNC for $240 million
After a dispute over equity for new hires, Blackstone sells BlackRock to PNC, which becomes its long-term majority owner.
1999BlackRock
NYSE IPO
BlackRock lists on the New York Stock Exchange on October 1, 1999, at $14 per share.
1999NVIDIA
GPU Category Defined
NVIDIA introduced the graphics processing unit concept in 1999. The milestone mattered because it framed graphics hardware as a specialized processor, a technical idea that later carried into accelerated computing and AI workloads.
2000BlackRock
BlackRock Solutions launched
BlackRock starts selling its internal risk analytics, later known as Aladdin, and advisory services to other institutions.
2006BlackRock
Merger with Merrill Lynch Investment Managers
The MLIM deal adds equity, retail and international businesses and gives Merrill Lynch a stake of nearly half of BlackRock.
2006NVIDIA
CUDA Opens GPUs to General Computing
CUDA opened GPU parallel processing to scientists, researchers, and developers outside graphics. It became the software foundation that made NVIDIA hardware useful for machine learning, simulation, and other compute-heavy workloads.
2008BlackRock
Hired to manage crisis assets
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York hires BlackRock to manage the Maiden Lane portfolios taken over from Bear Stearns and AIG.
2009BlackRock
Acquires Barclays Global Investors and iShares
BlackRock closes its purchase of BGI on December 1, 2009, becoming the world's largest asset manager and taking over the iShares ETF business.
2012NVIDIA
AlexNet Shows GPU Value for Deep Learning
The AlexNet breakthrough used NVIDIA GPUs to win the ImageNet competition. The event helped convince researchers and engineers that GPUs could accelerate neural-network training at a scale CPUs could not match.
2016NVIDIA
DGX-1 AI Supercomputer
Nvidia introduced the DGX-1 deep-learning supercomputer in 2016, its first system built specifically for artificial intelligence.
2018NVIDIA
RTX Brings Real-Time Ray Tracing to Graphics
NVIDIA RTX brought real-time ray tracing into the company's graphics roadmap. The product line kept gaming and professional visualization tied to AI-enhanced rendering while Data Center was becoming more important.
2020BlackRock
PNC exits its stake
PNC sells its roughly 22% stake in BlackRock, leaving the company without a large controlling shareholder.
2020NVIDIA
Mellanox Acquisition Adds Networking
NVIDIA completed the Mellanox acquisition for about $7 billion. The deal mattered because large AI and high-performance-computing clusters depend on fast networking between accelerators, not only on individual GPU speed.
2022NVIDIA
Arm Acquisition Terminated
NVIDIA and SoftBank terminated the proposed Arm acquisition because of significant regulatory challenges. The failed deal showed how closely governments watch control points in semiconductor architecture.
2022NVIDIA
Hopper H100 Announced
Nvidia announced the Hopper-architecture H100 data-center GPU in March 2022.
2023BlackRock
Moves headquarters to 50 Hudson Yards
BlackRock moves its New York headquarters to the 50 Hudson Yards tower on Manhattan's West Side.
2023NVIDIA
Grace CPU Enters Data Center Roadmap
NVIDIA introduced its first data-center CPU, Grace, for large-scale AI and high-performance computing. The milestone expanded the platform from GPUs and networking into CPU-GPU system design.
2024BlackRock
iShares Bitcoin Trust launch and GIP deal
BlackRock launches the iShares Bitcoin Trust in January and closes the roughly $12.5 billion purchase of Global Infrastructure Partners on October 1.
2024NVIDIA
Blackwell Architecture Launched
NVIDIA launched Blackwell as a data-center-scale architecture combining GPUs, CPUs, DPUs, interconnects, switch chips, systems, and networking adapters. The architecture became central to FY2026 Data Center demand.
2025BlackRock
HPS deal and record inflows
BlackRock completes the HPS Investment Partners and Preqin acquisitions, then ends the year with a record $698 billion of net inflows and $14 trillion in AUM.
2026BlackRock
AUM passes $15 trillion
AUM reaches a record $15.3 trillion at June 30, 2026, and a GIP-backed consortium closes the $40 billion acquisition of Aligned Data Centers in July.
2026NVIDIA
$215.9B FY2026 Revenue
NVIDIA reported $215.9 billion of FY2026 revenue, $193.7 billion of Data Center revenue, and $120.1 billion of net income. The result showed how far AI infrastructure had moved the company beyond its original PC graphics market.
Acquisitions
BlackRock
- Preqin2025$3.2B
- HPS Investment Partners2025$12B
- Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP)2024$12.5B
- Aperio Group2021$1.1B
- eFront2019$1.3B
- Barclays Global Investors (BGI) and iShares2009$13.5B
NVIDIA
- Groq (technology license and team)2025Undisclosed
- Run:ai2024$700M
- Excelero2022Undisclosed
- Mellanox Technologies2020$6.9B
- Cumulus Networks2020Undisclosed
- Icera2011$367M
Questions about BlackRock vs NVIDIA
Who is the CEO of BlackRock, Inc. and NVIDIA Corporation?
BlackRock, Inc. is led by Larry Fink and NVIDIA Corporation is led by Jensen Huang. Both serve as the top executive responsible for the company's strategy, operations, and financial performance.
When was BlackRock, Inc. founded vs NVIDIA Corporation?
BlackRock, Inc. was founded in 1988 — 5 years before NVIDIA Corporation, which was founded in 1993. BlackRock, Inc.'s longer operating history gives it a deeper track record but also potentially more institutional inertia compared to the younger NVIDIA Corporation.
How many employees does BlackRock, Inc. have compared to NVIDIA Corporation?
BlackRock, Inc. employs approximately 24,900 people, while NVIDIA Corporation employs approximately 42,000. NVIDIA Corporation has the larger workforce at 42,000 employees, compared to BlackRock, Inc.'s 24,900. A higher headcount does not necessarily imply greater efficiency — it often reflects differences in business model (e.g., manufacturing vs. software).
Where are BlackRock, Inc. and NVIDIA Corporation headquartered?
Both BlackRock, Inc. and NVIDIA Corporation are headquartered in United States, meaning they operate under the same primary regulatory and tax environment.
Who founded BlackRock, Inc. and NVIDIA Corporation?
BlackRock, Inc. was founded by Larry Fink, Robert S. Kapito, Susan Wagner, Barbara Novick, Ben Golub, Hugh Frater, Ralph Schlosstein, Keith Anderson. NVIDIA Corporation was founded by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, Curtis Priem.
Which company has a longer operating history — BlackRock, Inc. or NVIDIA Corporation?
BlackRock, Inc. has been operating for approximately 38 years, making it the more established of the two companies. NVIDIA Corporation has been in operation for around 33 years. A longer operating history often signals greater institutional resilience and brand recognition, though it can also mean slower adaptation to new market conditions.
Figures come from each company's filings and the sources linked beside them. Amounts reported in another currency are shown in US dollars at an approximate rate and marked with ~. Back to the BlackRock vs NVIDIA overview