Activision Blizzard, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Santa Monica, California.[3] The company was founded in July 2008 through the merger of Activision, Inc., the holding company of Activision Publishing, and Vivendi Games. The company is traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol ATVI,[4] and since 2015 has been one of the stocks that make up the S&P 500.[5] Activision Blizzard currently includes five business units:[6] Activision Publishing, Blizzard Entertainment, King,[7] Major League Gaming,[8] and Activision Blizzard Studios.[9][10] The company owns and operates additional studios under an independent studios model under Activision Publishing, including Treyarch, Infinity Ward, High Moon Studios and Toys for Bob.[6] Among major intellectual properties produced by Activision-Blizzard includes Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk’s, and Spyro/Skylanders through Activision’s studios, World of Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch through Blizzard Entertainment, and mobile titles including Candy Crush Saga through King. Activision-Blizzard’s titles have broken a number of release records.[11][12][13] As of March 2018, it is the largest game company in the Americas and Europe in terms of revenue and market capitalization.[14]

Nvidia Corporation, more commonly referred to as Nvidia (stylized as NVIDIA; formerly stylized as nVidia on products from the mid 90s to early 2000s), is an American technology company incorporated in Delaware and based in Santa Clara, California. It designs graphics processing units (GPUs) for the gaming and professional markets, as well as system on a chip units (SoCs) for the mobile computing and automotive market. Its primary GPU product line, labeled “GeForce”, is in direct competition with Advanced Micro Devices’ (AMD) “Radeon” products. Nvidia expanded its presence in the gaming industry with its handheld Shield Portable, Shield Tablet, and Shield Android TV. Since 2014, Nvidia has diversified its business focusing on four markets: gaming, professional visualization, data centers, and auto. Nvidia is also now focused on artificial intelligence. In addition to GPU manufacturing, Nvidia provides parallel processing capabilities to researchers and scientists that allow them to efficiently run high-performance applications. They are deployed in supercomputing sites around the world. More recently, it has moved into the mobile computing market, where it produces Tegra mobile processors for smartphones and tablets as well as vehicle navigation and entertainment systems. In addition to AMD, its competitors include Intel, Qualcomm, and Arm (e.g., because of Denver, while Nvidia also licenses Arm’s designs).