NodeMCU was created shortly after the ESP8266 came out, Espressif Systems began production of the ESP8266 in 2013 and the project expanded to include an open-hardware platform.
NodeMCU is a low-cost open source IoT platform. It initially included firmware which runs on the ESP8266 Wi-Fi SoC from Espressif Systems, and hardware which was based on the ESP-12 module. 
