Forbes points to Nvidia's current advantage in the graphics market as well as its incredible growth as a company, over the last five years and in the last year particularly, as the reasoning behind the honor--the company's revenues are at $4 billion, up 33% year over year, and its profits are at $900 million, up 50% year over year, while its share price is up 2100% since its 1999 IPO.

The success of the Santa Clara, California-based company is pinned on CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, who cofounded it in 1993. As Nvidia competes with Intel's integrated graphics solutions on the low end, and new AMD subsidiary ATI's dedicated cards on the high end, Huang indicated he plans to continue running Nvidia the way that has brought its current success: by constantly iterating and improving its core product.

Meanwhile it provides the graphics chip for the PS3, is expanding out into the non-gaming arena of research analysis hardware, and hopes to drive sophisticated graphics in less-hardcore areas such as web interfaces. "What if Google Earth had a 3D representation of every single building, every single square meter on Earth, and you could access it in the blink of an eye?" Huang asked. "The more content there is, the more visual interest there can be, the more processing horsepower people need."