Nvidia grew to become a $1 trillion firm due to AI. Look inside their lavish Star Trek-inspired HQ  | The AI Beat

1.25 million sq. ft throughout two large metal and glass constructions. Tons of of convention rooms named after Star Trek locations, alien races and starships, in addition to astronomical objects — planets, constellations and galaxies. Acres of greenery and elevated “birds nests” the place folks can work and meet. A bar referred to as ‘Shannon’s’ with a panoramic view and loads of desk house for board video games. 

That is the practically $1 billion headquarters of Nvidia in Santa Clara, California — situated on a patch of prime Silicon Valley land the place the expertise firm has spent the previous three a long time rising from a {hardware} supplier for online game acceleration to a full-stack {hardware} and software program firm at present powering the generative AI revolution.

However amid the lavish structure and the enjoyable perks, it may be troublesome to discern the onerous work and intense stress that supported Nvidia’s entrance into the $1 trillion valuation membership final month, alongside fellow tech giants Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft. As I walked the equal of a winding Yellow Brick Street to the principle entrance, with a view of the towering curves and features of the 2 buildings rising over the San Tomas Expressway, I questioned whether or not I’d get a peek behind the PR curtain at Nvidia’s true nature. 

“The place’s Jensen?” 

“The place’s Jensen?” I requested Anna Kiachian, the Nvidia PR supervisor who had organized my campus go to. 

The reality is, I hadn’t anticipated to get an viewers with Nvidia CEO and co-founder Jensen Huang. For all I knew, Huang had been enjoyable within the Maldives ever since Nvidia grew to become a Wall Avenue darling this spring within the wake of the generative AI growth — ten years after serving to to energy the deep studying “revolution” of a decade in the past. Business analysts estimate that Nvidia’s dominance extends to over 80% of the graphical processing unit (GPU) market, which is a must have for each firm working AI fashions, from OpenAI all the way down to the smallest startup. 

Nonetheless, I figured maybe a random sighting of Huang’s ubiquitous black leather-based jacket — from afar — was attainable. 

“I’m undecided,” Kiachian replied with a conspiratorial smile as we strolled by an immense atrium with tons of of triangular-shaped skylights gleaming overhead. However she emphasised that Jensen got here into the workplace day-after-day when he was on the town: “So that you by no means know!” 

Fortunately, the sight strains had been glorious for Jensen-watching, particularly for the reason that headquarters’ two buildings — Endeavor, which opened in 2017 and Voyager, which debuted in 2022  (each named after Star Trek starships)— had been hardly crammed to capability. There have been clearly loads of Nvidia staff nonetheless working at residence or on summer time trip, leaving loads of white house to identify one black leather-based jacket. 

But when any house may lure folks again to the workplace, that is it: Endeavor and Voyager price a whopping $920 million to construct — a small worth to pay, apparently, to satisfy Huang’s imaginative and prescient of giving each worker a view whereas boosting collaboration and random connections. Designed by structure agency Gensler, which constructed the biggest skyscraper in China, they’re something however a claustrophobic maze of hallways, cubicles and information facilities. As a substitute, I felt like I may spot Jensen from a half-mile away throughout the sprawling, hovering, angular expanse.

There was no time for approaching him, nevertheless. I used to be on a strict schedule of conferences, starting with a campus tour led by Jack Dahlgren, who heads up Nvidia Omniverse developer relations but in addition served as undertaking and design supervisor for the buildings. As I racked up steps on my Fitbit, Dahlgren interjected with enjoyable details, like how folks stored getting misplaced looking for convention rooms in Endeavor as a result of their order was understood solely by essentially the most devoted sci-fi nerds and there was little signage (Dahlgren mentioned Jensen felt a big map would litter the panorama). The newer Voyager, he defined, has them in alphabetical order. 

The triangular design of the 2 buildings, he continued, are repeated within the triangles all through the roof and flooring plans, which had been computationally designed with an algorithm. “Triangles characterize the constructing blocks of all 3D graphics,” he mentioned. 

There are additionally hidden metaphors: For instance, Endeavor’s core will be seen as a tree trunk, with branches unfold out from the middle. It’s very noisy and busy within the center, whereas across the exterior are relaxed and quiet frequent areas. Voyager, alternatively, with its many noisy, whirring labs within the heart, referred to as “The Mountain,” with public areas unfold excessive (with ‘Shannon’s’ bar on the pinnacle), that includes views dealing with Silicon Valley and the mountains past it. 

Jensen Huang’s presence looms giant at Nvidia

Huang, a local of Taiwan whose household emigrated to the U.S. when he was simply 4 years outdated, co-founded Nvidia in 1993 with the objective of constructing graphics chips for accelerated computing — first for gaming, after which, it turned out, for AI. Lately, Nvidia is as a lot, if no more, of a software program firm as a {hardware} firm, with a full-stack ecosystem that started practically twenty years in the past by constructing CUDA [compute unified device architecture], which put normal function acceleration into the fingers of thousands and thousands of builders. Right now, specialists see little probability of anybody catching Nvidia in relation to AI compute dominance, with the biggest corporations with the deepest pockets battling for entry to Nvidia newest H100 GPUs. 

Whether or not he’s within the workplace or not, it’s clear that Huang’s presence looms giant round each nook. He appears to function founder, fatherly determine and  as a form of revered Star Trek captain. The phrase “Jensen says” is usually uttered, whether or not it’s quotes from his many inspirational speeches round technique and tradition, or his emphasis on a  “first rules” method — form of a mission assertion for every undertaking. 

“Jensen says the mission is the boss,” mentioned Dalhgren. For instance, the mission was to construct the headquarters, he defined. However nobody was the boss of the undertaking. Teams got here collectively, he defined, and the undertaking itself was the boss. 

That appeared a bit onerous to consider — Huang actually appeared just like the boss. In a earlier piece I wrote about Nvidia, an analyst instructed me that Huang is seen as demanding. There have been graphics engineers at different tech corporations that had been ‘renegades’ from Nvidia, he mentioned — who left as a result of they couldn’t deal with the stress. 

Nonetheless, Nvidia prides itself on its lack of hierarchy — apart from Huang on the helm. One of the vital within the “everybody else in addition to Jensen” camp is Chris Malachowsky, one in all Huang’s two co-founders who now serves as SVP for engineering and operations. In a type of “random connections” moments, Kiachian gave an excited little leap when she realized he was strolling in direction of us, and gave me a heat introduction. 

Once I requested him what he considered the brand new campus, Malachowsky mentioned it “boggled his creativeness” and went on to cite one in all Huang’s oft-repeated themes:  “I do know it appears absurd, however we consider ourselves as a startup,” he mentioned. “Jensen used to say we had been at all times 30 days from going out of enterprise, so to truly be confronted with what not going out of enterprise means is flattering and good, I can actually simply say ‘wow.’” 

Nvidia’s hardworking AI chips 

Malachowsky’s mellow vibe didn’t prolong, nevertheless, to the windowless lab that concluded my campus tour — a chilly, noisy, claustrophobic house the place Nvidia’s AI chips had been being examined. 

Dahlgren identified that the essential rules for the chip designs had been additionally used within the constructing’s designs. “Earlier than we ship the chip off to the fab to get constructed, we do pre-silicon emulation — we check it with a supercomputer which emulates how the silicon and the wires will work when it’s put collectively,” he mentioned. “We did the identical factor after we constructed the mannequin of the constructing — we simulated how mild would move, we measured that, we got here to an understanding of how it could carry out earlier than we constructed it.”

I considered that once I noticed examples of the chips in a museum-like demo room, from a $69 graphics card to the $40,000 H100 cluster — 1000 of which constructed OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The shiny, glimmering metallic squares, rectangles and containers had been actually lovely, disguising the huge workloads they tackle to energy right now’s LLMs. 

They jogged my memory of Nvidia HQ’s shimmering skylights, uplifting views and daring, geometric design — which belie the late nights, drudgery and frustration that, I felt, should even be a part of the corporate’s success algorithm.

Beneath Nvidia’s shiny floor 

The Nvidia cafeteria was stuffed with hungry staffers by early afternoon. Kialchia identified that Jensen had determined to shut the Endeavor cafeteria so everybody needed to come to the one in Voyager — creating much more random connections for workers. So there have been precise strains on the salad bar. 

Kialchia additionally pointed to an indication which mentioned right now was Popcorn Thursday, which she famous with amusing was a surprisingly huge deal at Nvidia. Extremely-paid builders, apparently, can nonetheless love a freshly-popped bag of popcorn.

As I munched my popcorn, I couldn’t assist however surprise if that’s the place I’d need to look to see beneath the floor of Nvidia: On the folks. Irrespective of how lovely the campus, how optimistic the tradition, and the way passionate the founder, doesn’t it nonetheless take individuals who work onerous and set excessive requirements and don’t at all times get alongside to get forward?

However that was onerous to suss out on my tour: Throughout my stroll round Endeavor and Voyager, for instance, Kiachian had decreed that what I believed was a humorous anecdote from Dahlgren was off the file. It was one thing completely foolish, only a reminiscence of how Nvidia didn’t at all times have such a comfortable campus. It was nixed, I suppose, as a result of it didn’t match Nvidia’s happy-go-lucky narrative. Dahlgren, for his half, brushed it off, saying that everybody at Nvidia appeared to have a humorousness, even when it often veered in direction of the darkish aspect. 

“A few of it’s darkish humor, as a result of work is difficult,” he mentioned. “Nevertheless it’s rewarding.” 

As I ended my day at Nvidia, I noticed that I by no means received my Jensen sighting. I wasn’t dissatisfied — I completely loved my transient touchdown on Planet Nvidia. However I want I may have gotten extra of a way of the blood, sweat and tears that’s undoubtedly required to construct AI’s most well-known picks and shovels. Nonetheless, the corporate’s dreamy tradition of inspiration, illuminated by Endeavor and Voyager’s dramatic structure and jaw-dropping {hardware}, is difficult to withstand. And I’ve a hunch Nvidia will dwell lengthy and prosper.