Priem Family Foundation

Priem Family Foundation

Curtis and Cindi Priem founded the Burlingame-based Priem Family Foundation in 1999, shortly after Curtis's tenure as NVIDIA's first Chief Technology Officer and the company's 1999 IPO. The foundation is the primary philanthropic vehicle for the wealth Curtis Priem generated as a co-founder of the graphics-chip giant. It operates as a non-operating foundation, meaning it makes grants to other organizations rather than running its own programs. The foundation proactively identifies partners and does not accept unsolicited proposals. Grantmaking concentrates on two geographic poles: the San Francisco Bay Area, near the foundation's headquarters, and the area around Troy, New York, home to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), which is the foundation’s most prominent and recurring beneficiary. Funding priorities include STEM education, particularly at the university level, and arts and creativity programs. The foundation also supports organizations serving people with disabilities. The foundation's investment portfolio, estimated at roughly $125 million, is managed to sustain this grantmaking. It includes a mix of traditional market investments, venture-stage exposures, and significant real estate holdings, including a commercial office in Burlingame and multiple residential and land properties in Alameda County. Curtis Priem serves as the foundation's President and maintains a deep, hands-on relationship with RPI, where he is Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees and a major benefactor. His most notable single gift was a 2001 commitment to the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at RPI, an iconic building and program that opened in 2008. Cindi Priem serves as the foundation's Vice President and is active in community organizations, including a role with the Livermore Valley Winegrowers Foundation. The foundation does not list staff beyond the two principals, suggesting a lean operational structure consistent with a family-directed philanthropy. The Priem Family Foundation's structure as a non-operating foundation funded by a single tech fortune places it in a cohort of similarly scaled, post-IPO philanthropic vehicles. Its structural differentiator is the extreme concentration of its institutional philanthropy: a deep, long-term commitment to a single university, RPI, paired with a geographically bifurcated focus that connects the foundation's Bay Area roots directly to that university's campus. This creates a narrow but deep channel for deploying capital, rather than a broad, diversified grantmaking strategy.