| Curtis Priem | |
| Birth Name: | Curtis R. Priem |
| Field: | Electrical engineering |
| Work Institutions: | IBM Sun Microsystems Nvidia |
| Alma Mater: | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute |
| Known For: | Co-founding Nvidia |
Curtis R. Priem (born [1]) is an American electrical engineer.
He received a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1982. He designed the first graphics processor for the PC, the IBM Professional Graphics Adapter.
From 1986 to 1993, he was a senior staff engineer at Sun Microsystems, where he developed the GX graphics chip.
He co-founded Nvidia with Jen-Hsun Huang and Chris Malachowsky and was its Chief Technical Officer from 1993 to 2003. He retired from NVIDIA in 2003.
In 2000, RPI named him Entrepreneur of the Year.[2] From 2003 to 2007 he was a trustee of Rensselaer.[3] In 2004 he announced that he would donate an unrestricted gift of $40 million to the Institute. Rensselaer subsequently created the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, named in his honor and usually referred to as "EMPAC" for short.[4]
He is also president of the Priem Family Foundation, which he established with his wife Veronica in September, 1999. The foundation is non-operating (i.e., has no office or staff, and therefore, no overhead) and exists only to give money to other foundations or charities.