[ak217]

They did give out a bunch of free GPUs to universities, but more than that, they have invested heavily and deliberately in HPC: community engagement, better SDKs (it's been almost a decade since I've first been able to build a Linux executable against CUDA, and that code should still work), server SKUs sold in the server channel (AMD didn't bother to design SKUs for servers until it was too late). Other things that solidified NVIDIA's lead were the AWS win (in 2010, they managed to partner with AWS to bring GPU instances to market - and those are thriving) and the 2011 ORNL Titan win (important for the HPC community mindshare).

[smhost]

They also partner with universities to design courses around Nvidia products, so they're better at funneling talent. Or at least it seems so. I don't know about AMD programs.