Curtis Priem

Curtis R. Priem 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 cofounded 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.[1] From 2003 to 2007 he was a trustee of Rensselaer.[2] 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.[3]

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.