Fortinet vs NVIDIA: Founders, CEOs and History
Fortinet was founded in 2000 by Ken Xie, Michael Xie and is led by Ken Xie. NVIDIA was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, Curtis Priem and is led by Jensen Huang.
Company facts
Founders
Fortinet
Ken Xie
Ken Xie co-founded Fortinet in 2000 with his brother Michael and has led it as Chairman and CEO since. Before Fortinet he co-founded NetScreen Technologies, a hardware-accelerated firewall company that Juniper Networks acquired in 2004 for about $4 billion.
Michael Xie
Michael Xie co-founded Fortinet with his brother Ken Xie in 2000 and serves as President and Chief Technology Officer. He oversees engineering, including the FortiOS operating system and the FortiASIC processors that accelerate FortiGate firewalls.
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
Fortinet
- Ken Xie2000–present
Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Xie is widely recognized as one of the most successful and enduring pioneers of the modern cybersecurity industry.
Source - Michael Xie2000–present
Co-Founder, President and Chief Technology Officer
Co-founded Fortinet with his brother Ken Xie in 2000 and has served as President and CTO, directing engineering and the custom silicon that differentiates FortiGate.
Source - Christiane Ohlgart2023–present
Chief Financial Officer
Serving as interim CFO, she steered the company through a severe, highly volatile period of plunging hardware sales, aggressively pushing the company's transition toward higher-margin software and services revenue.
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: Fortinet and NVIDIA side by side
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.
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.
2000Fortinet
Fortinet Founded
Ken Xie and Michael Xie founded Fortinet to build high-performance network security products.
2002Fortinet
FortiGate Launch
The FortiGate appliance family established Fortinet's firewall-led product identity.
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.
2009Fortinet
IPO
Fortinet went public, giving the company access to capital for global enterprise expansion.
2012Fortinet
Acquired XDN
Fortinet acquired XDN. Fortinet acquired XDN in 2012.
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.
2013Fortinet
Acquired Coyote Point
Fortinet acquired Coyote Point. Fortinet acquired Coyote Point in 2013.
2015Fortinet
Acquired Meru Networks
Fortinet acquired Meru Networks. Fortinet acquired Meru Networks in 2015.
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.
2019Fortinet
Security Fabric Expansion
Fortinet broadened from firewalls into integrated secure networking, endpoint, cloud, and operations products.
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.
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.
2024Fortinet
Lacework and Next DLP Acquisitions
Fortinet bought cloud-security firm Lacework and data-loss-prevention vendor Next DLP.
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.
2025Fortinet
Service Revenue Reaches Two-Thirds of Sales
FY2025 service revenue reached $4.5812B, or 67 percent of total revenue.
2026Fortinet
Refresh-Driven Acceleration
Q2 2026 revenue rose 26% to $2.05B and 2026 revenue guidance was raised to $8.02-$8.18B.
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
Fortinet
- Everest2025Undisclosed
- Lacework2024Undisclosed
- Next DLP2024Undisclosed
- ShieldX2021Undisclosed
- Sken.Ai2021Undisclosed
- OPAQ Networks2020Undisclosed
NVIDIA
- Groq (technology license and team)2025Undisclosed
- Run:ai2024$700M
- Excelero2022Undisclosed
- Mellanox Technologies2020$6.9B
- Cumulus Networks2020Undisclosed
- Icera2011$367M
Questions about Fortinet vs NVIDIA
Who is the CEO of Fortinet, Inc. and NVIDIA Corporation?
Fortinet, Inc. is led by Ken Xie 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 Fortinet, Inc. founded vs NVIDIA Corporation?
NVIDIA Corporation was founded in 1993 — 7 years before Fortinet, Inc., which was founded in 2000. NVIDIA Corporation's longer operating history gives it a deeper track record but also potentially more institutional inertia compared to the younger Fortinet, Inc..
How many employees does Fortinet, Inc. have compared to NVIDIA Corporation?
Fortinet, Inc. employs approximately 15,109 people, while NVIDIA Corporation employs approximately 42,000. NVIDIA Corporation has the larger workforce at 42,000 employees, compared to Fortinet, Inc.'s 15,109. A higher headcount does not necessarily imply greater efficiency — it often reflects differences in business model (e.g., manufacturing vs. software).
Where are Fortinet, Inc. and NVIDIA Corporation headquartered?
Both Fortinet, Inc. and NVIDIA Corporation are headquartered in United States, meaning they operate under the same primary regulatory and tax environment.
Who founded Fortinet, Inc. and NVIDIA Corporation?
Fortinet, Inc. was founded by Ken Xie, Michael Xie. NVIDIA Corporation was founded by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, Curtis Priem.
Which company has a longer operating history — Fortinet, Inc. or NVIDIA Corporation?
NVIDIA Corporation has been operating for approximately 33 years, making it the more established of the two companies. Fortinet, Inc. has been in operation for around 26 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 Fortinet vs NVIDIA overview