Where is your GPU made? Locations 16 brands will and won't disclose

A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to perform mathematical calculations rapidly. There is one in the phone in your pocket, the laptop on your desk, the console under your television, and the data centers behind every AI service you've used.

Most of them you never see and never choose. The ones you can — graphics cards — are the visible edge of a much larger industry, and their origins are the hardest to trace. One company designs the chip at its center, another fabricates it, a third packages it, a fourth solders it onto a board, and a fifth sells it to you under its own name. The sticker on the box tells you almost none of this.

Mordor Intelligence predicts the GPU market will grow from USD 144.83 billion in 2026 to USD 296.34 billion by 2031, with servers and data centers — already about a third of revenue — growing fastest. That pull reaches everything else: the same fabs, packaging lines and memory supply serve phones, laptops and graphics cards alike, and memory shortages are already pushing component prices up.

Two kinds of GPU

Integrated — built into the same chip as the processor and sharing its memory. It arrives inside a phone, a laptop, or a console, with no separate purchase and no separate name.

Discrete — its own chip, its own memory, its own board. About two-thirds of the market, and the only kind sold as a product in its own right.

Two kinds of company

The designers make the GPU itself — the architecture, the silicon, the instruction set. Six do this at a meaningful scale. Most are fabless: they design chips and pay someone else to manufacture them. Only Intel and Samsung own and operate leading-edge fabs — and even Intel, which runs fifteen wafer fabs across ten sites, does not fabricate its own Arc graphics chips.

The board partners take a finished chip and build the card you can actually buy: the board, the cooler, the fan shroud, the warranty, the brand on the box. They exist only because discrete GPUs do. When you choose between two cards carrying the same NVIDIA chip at different prices, you are choosing between board partners.

Chip Designers

NVIDIA Corporation

Legal name: NVIDIA Corporation

Establishment: April 5, 1993

Headquarters: Santa Clara, California, USA.

Key Operations Centers: USA, Taiwan, China, India, and Israel.

R&D: Generative AI, multimodal learning, and 3D vision - Taiwan; Robotics - Seattle, USA; 3D Deep Learning - Toronto, Canada (NVIDIA Toronto AI Lab); Dynamic Vision and Learning - Munich, Germany; Perception, Action, and Reasoning (PAR) Lab - Tel Aviv, Israel; Real-Time Graphics Research - Europe and North America; High-Fidelity Physics Research - Asia, Europe, and North America.

Manufacturers: Outsourced to TSMC (Taiwan) and Samsung (USA and South Korea).

Specializes in: Graphics processing units (GPUs) for gaming, AI, data centers, and autonomous vehicles.

Sources: NVIDIA, "Locations & Regional Offices", Britannica Money, "NVIDIA Corporation | History, GPUs, & Artificial Intelligence", Wikipedia, "Nvidia"

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)

Legal name: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

Establishment: May 1, 1969

Headquarters: Santa Clara, California, USA

Key Operations Centers: USA (Austin, TX; San Jose), Canada (Markham), India (Bengaluru, Hyderabad), Malaysia (Penang), Taiwan, Singapore.

R&D: USA (Austin, San Jose, Santa Clara), India (Bengaluru; Hyderabad), Canada (Markham), Malaysia (Penang), Ireland.

Manufacturers: Outsourced to GlobalFoundries (Singapore and USA) and TSMC (Taiwan).

Specializes in: CPUs (Ryzen for consumer/client, EPYC for data centers/servers) — AMD's founding and largest product line; GPUs (Radeon for gaming, Instinct for data center/AI/HPC); semi-custom chips for gaming consoles (PlayStation, Xbox).

Sources: AMD, "Corporate Locations", EBSCO Research Starters, "Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD)", Wikipedia, "AMD"

Intel Corporation

Legal name: Intel Corporation

Establishment: July 18, 1968

Headquarters: Santa Clara, California, USA.

Key Operations Centers: USA (California, Oregon); Poland (Gdansk, Warsaw); India; Malaysia (Penang).

R&D: USA (Texas, Massachusetts); Costa Rica; Mexico; Israel (Haifa, Petah Tikva, Jerusalem); China; India; Germany.

Manufacturers: Intel’s own fabrication plants (fabs) are located in the USA (Arizona, New Mexico) and Ireland, while Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City) is an Assembly and Test site.

Specializes in: CPUs, integrated and discrete GPUs, AI accelerators, data centers, and edge computing.

Sources: Intel Official Website

Qualcomm Incorporated

Legal name: Qualcomm Incorporated

Establishment: July 1, 1985

Headquarters: San Diego, California, USA.

Key Operations Centers: USA, China, Singapore.

R&D: USA, India.

Manufacturers: Fabless. Chip fabrication is primarily outsourced to TSMC and Samsung Foundry.

Specializes in: Mobile GPUs, AI, edge computing, and automotive graphics solutions.

Sources: Qualcomm Official Website, Wikipedia (Qualcomm), PC Perspective, "Qualcomm History and its GPU (R)evolution", San Diego Regional EDC, "What Qualcomm means to San Diego"

Samsung Electronics

Legal name: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

Establishment: January 13, 1969

Headquarters: Suwon, South Korea.

Key Operations Centers: Suwon, South Korea; Shenzhen, China; San Jose, California, USA; Munich, Germany; Tokyo, Japan; Singapore.

R&D: Hwaseong, Korea; Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel; San Jose, USA; Yokohama-shi, Japan; Montreal, Canada; Austin, USA; San Diego, USA; Cambridge, UK; Xian, China; Beijing, China; Bengaluru, India; Hsinchu.

Manufacturers: Samsung’s semiconductor fabs are in Taylor, USA; Austin, USA; Giheung, South Korea; Hwaseong, South Korea; and Pyeongtaek, South Korea.

Specializes in: Integrated GPUs for mobile devices, AI, automotive systems, and VR/AR.

Sources: Samsung Official Website, Wikipedia (Samsung), Britannica Money, "Samsung | History, Consumer Products, Leadership, & Facts"

Apple Inc.

Legal name: Apple Inc.

Establishment: April 1, 1976

Headquarters: Cupertino, California, USA.

Key Operations Centers: Cupertino, California, USA; Arizona, USA; Cork, Ireland; Shanghai, China.

R&D: Apple Silicon (A-series and M-series chips with integrated GPU cores) — developed jointly out of Cupertino and Herzliya; the Herzliya team (many recruited from Intel Israel) has been central to core CPU architecture work.

Manufacturers: Fabless. Chips are manufactured almost exclusively by TSMC (Taiwan).

Specializes in: Custom system-on-chip designs (Apple Silicon) with integrated GPUs for iPhone, iPad, and Mac — optimized for Apple's own devices rather than sold to third parties.

Sources: Official Apple Website, Wikipedia (Apple)

Add-in Board (AIB)

ASUSTeK Computer Inc.

Legal name: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. (ASUS)

Establishment: April 2, 1989

Headquarters: Beitou District, Taipei, Taiwan.

Key Operations Centers: USA, Netherlands (Almere), Singapore.

R&D: Taiwan (Taipei); China (Suzhou); India (Bangalore).

Manufacturers: Own manufacturing in Taiwan, China, Mexico, and the Czech Republic. Outsourced manufacturing to Pegatron Corporation and others.

Specializes in: Motherboards, graphics cards, laptops, and gaming hardware (ROG).

Sources: Official Asus Website

Micro-Star International (MSI)

Legal name: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd.

Establishment: August 4, 1986

Headquarters: Zhonghe District, New Taipei City, Taiwan.

Key Operations Centers: MSI has offices worldwide; however, it does not disclose which locations are key hubs.

R&D: Taipei, Taiwan; Shenzhen, China; Kunshan, China; USA (Silicon Valley, California); Germany (Frankfurt).

Manufacturers: In-house manufacturing facilities in Taiwan and China and undisclosed outsourced production partners in Asia.

Specializes in: Gaming GPUs, laptops, motherboards, and PC components.

Sources: Official MSI Website, Handwiki (MSI)

GIGABYTE Technology

Legal name: GIGA-BYTE Technology Co., Ltd.

Establishment: April 30, 1986

Headquarters: Xindian District, New Taipei City, Taiwan.

Key Operations Centers: Taiwan (HQ), USA (California).

R&D: Taiwan, China (more exact locations are undisclosed).

Manufacturers: In-house across Taiwan, China (Nanjing), and Vietnam.

Specializes in: Motherboards and graphics cards; expanding into AI servers and computing infrastructure supporting NVIDIA GPUs, DPUs, and CPUs.

Sources: GIGABYTE Business Overview

PC Partner Group Limited (ZOTAC, Inno3D, Manli)

Legal name: PC Partner Group Limited

Establishment: 1997

Headquarters: Singapore (relocated from Hong Kong on November 15, 2024).

Key Operations Centers: Singapore (HQ), other key operations centers are unconfirmed.
R&D: Singapore.

Manufacturers: In-house manufacturing in China (Dongguan) and Indonesia (Batam) for its child brands ZOTAC, Inno3D, and Manli.

Specializes in: OEM/ODM manufacturing and design of graphics cards and mini-PCs. The company is known for producing components under brands such as ZOTAC and Inno3D, with a strong focus on gaming and high-performance computing solutions.

Sources: Official PCPartners Website

Sapphire Technology Limited

Legal name: Sapphire Technology Limited

Establishment: 19 September 2001

Headquarters: Sha Tin, Hong Kong

Key Operations Centers: Unconfirmed — no additional offices located beyond Hong Kong HQ

R&D: Unconfirmed — no distinct R&D location found

Manufacturers: Own manufacturing facilities in Dongguan, China

Specializes in: AMD Radeon-exclusive graphics cards (AIB partner since the ATI era), motherboards, professional/embedded graphics solutions, and mini-PCs (Edge AI line) 

Sources: Wikipedia (Sapphire Technology), Baike Baidu (Sapphire Technology)

PNY Technologies, Inc.

Legal name: PNY Technologies, Inc.

Establishment: 1985

Headquarters: Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey, USA

Key Operations Centers: 

• PNY Technologies Europe - Mérignac Cedex, France

• PNY Technologies Asia Pacific Limited - Zhubei City, Hsinchu County, Taiwan

• PNY Technologies Middle East FZE - Dubai.

R&D: Unconfirmed — no distinct R&D site located.

Manufacturers: Unconfirmed

Specializes in: NVIDIA GeForce and Quadro-based graphics cards — PNY's primary role as NVIDIA's leading North American AIB partner 

Sources: Official PNY Website, Official PNY Website (Worldwide Locations), Wikipedia (PNY)

TUL Corporation (PowerColor, VTX3D)

Legal name: TUL Corporation.

Establishment: October 8, 1997

Headquarters: Xizhi District, New Taipei City, Taiwan

Key Operations Centers: None separately identified; offices in Taiwan, China, Europe, Russia, USA (California).

R&D: Xizhi, New Taipei City, Taiwan.

Manufacturers: In-house production at TUL's Baozhang facility in Xizhi, New Taipei City; some production is also contracted to Foxconn.

Specializes in: AMD Radeon-based gaming graphics cards under the PowerColor brand, plus the VTX3D brand for European/Asian markets, industrial graphics cards, SoC motherboards/systems, and FPGA solutions.

Sources: FindCompany (TUL Corporation), Wikipedia (TUL), Datanyze (TUL)

Palit Microsystems Ltd. (Gainward, GALAX)

Legal name: Palit Microsystems Ltd.

Establishment: 1988

Headquarters: Taipei, Taiwan

Key Operations Centers: Hong Kong; Germany (Düsseldorf).

R&D: Taipei, Taiwan; Palit does not publicly disclose a definitive list of dedicated R&D centers.

Manufacturers: Palit operates its own manufacturing in Shenzhen, China.

Specializes in: NVIDIA-based discrete graphics cards/add-in boards for gaming, creators, and AI/PC applications. Palit describes itself as a major NVIDIA add-in-board partner and specializes in graphics-card manufacturing. 

Sources: Official Palit Website, Wikipedia (Palit)

Colorful Technology

Legal name: Shenzhen Colorful Technology Development Co., Ltd. 

Establishment: Founded in 1995, registered as Colorful in 2015.

Headquarters: Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

Key Operations Centers: China, South Korea, and Germany

R&D: Unconfirmed — no official source found.

Manufacturers: UNRESOLVED — no facility named anywhere in Colorful's own materials. 

Specializes in: NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards under the Colorful and iGame brands, plus COLORFIRE and CVN lines.

Sources: Official Colorful Website, Official Colorful Website