Inside Nvidia HQ: What a $2T Company’s Office Looks Like | WSJ Open Office
Summary
TLDRNvidia built two new spaceship-like office buildings called Endeavor and Voyager to foster collaboration and efficiency among its employees. They used their own technology to simulate daylight and acoustics when designing the open offices. The buildings have triangular motifs inspired by Nvidia's origins in 3D graphics, as well as futuristic shapes alluding to the company's role powering AI innovation. With amenities like a living wall, on-site bar, and miles of staircases, the office spaces reflect Nvidia's playful soul and aim to propel their chip design work to the next level.
Takeaways
- 😊 Nvidia designed its new headquarters buildings Voyager and Endeavor to foster collaboration and connections between its employees
- 👷♂️ The triangle shape seen throughout the buildings ties back to Nvidia's origins with 3D computer graphics
- 🌿 Over 14,000 plants are incorporated into Voyager to balance the tech and bring nature into the space
- 😎 The rooftops and ceilings have triangular skylights but also insulation to absorb sound in the open offices
- 🏢 The outdoor park connects the two buildings so Nvidians can easily move between them in just 2 minutes
- ⚙️ Nvidia used its own visualization software when designing the buildings to simulate daylight and other elements
- 🚶♂️ The many staircases encourage movement and chance encounters between employees
- 🔬Dedicated lab spaces are shielded from daylight for optimal working conditions
- 💡AI and Nvidia's own technology will likely play a major role in designing any future expansion buildings
- 👽The futuristic shapes and designs reflect Nvidia's forward-thinking culture and aspirations
Q & A
What is the symbolism behind the triangle motif used throughout the Nvidia buildings?
-The triangle motif reflects the origins of the company in 3D graphics, which were based on drawing triangles.
How did Nvidia use their own technology to help design the new headquarters?
-Nvidia used their visualization tools and chips to simulate daylight and optimize how much natural light comes into the buildings through the skylights.
What are some of the key differences in layout between the Endeavor and Voyager buildings?
-Endeavor feels more inwardly focused, while Voyager is wide open with the 'mountain' design spreading collaboration spaces across floors. Voyager also has more lab space.
How did the building design aim to maximize efficiency for employees?
-There are many staircases to promote movement and interaction. Hallways provide shortcuts between buildings. The workspace is mainly open-plan to enable collaboration.
Why did they opt for an open-plan workspace instead of cubicles?
-Studies have shown that visual connections enabled by open-plan allow for quicker iteration times and deeper relationships important for complex work.
How did they aim to mitigate noise issues from the open-plan layout?
-The shaped roof helps diffuse and absorb sound reflections. There is also acoustic insulation in the ceiling.
Why is part of Voyager shielded from daylight?
-The middle section houses large lab spaces where consistent lighting conditions are needed for technology development.
How much total lab space is there in Voyager?
-There is over 42,000 square feet of lab space in Voyager alone, making up over 15% of the total area.
Why is there so much greenery incorporated into the buildings?
-The plants help balance out and soften the focus on technology, making the spaces more inviting and lively.
Do the designers think Nvidia will use AI in future campus buildings?
-Yes, they believe AI will undoubtedly play an assistant role in constructing and designing future spaces to extend capabilities.
Outlines
😄 Nvidia's futuristic campus powered by their own tech
Paragraph 1 describes Nvidia's new 500,000 sq ft Endeavor and 750,000 sq ft Voyager office buildings on their Santa Clara campus. Nvidia used their own visualization tools and chips to help design the spaces, focusing on natural light, acoustics, and layouts that connect people and ideas. The triangle shape features heavily as an homage to Nvidia's graphics origins.
🌞 Balancing light and efficiency across campus
Paragraph 2 explains how Nvidia simulated daylight and other conditions using their tech while designing the spaces. This helped create ideal working environments across the 42,000 sq ft of labs and open office spaces housing 5,000 employees. Despite the openness, acoustics and quick access between buildings boost efficiency.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡NVIDIA headquarters
💡GPU chips
💡open office
💡acoustics
💡stairs and paths
💡simulation
💡lab spaces
💡plants and green walls
💡campus expansion
💡AI integration
Highlights
Nvidia used its own tech to design its new headquarters
The buildings are inspired by Nvidia's graphics chips
The spaces promote collaboration through open floor plans
Acoustic design minimizes noise in the open spaces
Visual connections enable collaboration even without audio
More staircases promote chance encounters and connections
Short walking paths connect the buildings efficiently
Nvidia simulated the buildings before construction
The simulation matched reality very closely
Shielded lab spaces don't get daylight
Abundant plants bring nature into the high-tech spaces
The owned buildings signify Nvidia's maturity
There's room to expand further in the future
AI may assist in designing future buildings
Future applications of AI are still unknown
Transcripts
- [Adam] At Nvidia's headquarters,
the chips that propelled the company
to a 2 trillion dollar valuation
were used in custom software
that helped design this office.
- We're using a lot of their visualization tools
to help optimize the daylight that's coming in here.
- We got to test out our technology on our own project.
- [Adam] And beyond powering the program
that visualized the office,
NVIDIA's chips also served
as the inspiration for these futuristic buildings.
- These projects are all about the soul of Nvidia.
- [Adam] So what does the soul
of one of the most sought after places to work look like
and how does NVIDIA's space fuel the work,
powering the AI revolution?
I took a tour and chased down a robot to find out.
- [Adam] On NVIDIA's campus in Santa Clara, California,
these two buildings are the focus.
The 500,000 square foot Endeavor,
and the 750,000 square foot Voyager.
Yes, those are Star Trek references.
An outdoor park connects these two buildings.
- Our triangle motif here is really a reflection
of the origins of the company.
3D graphics were based originally on drawing triangles.
- [Adam] The triangle is everywhere.
From windows to walkways,
to this corrugated structure.
- This is the heart.
The heart contains many of our most active spaces.
Reception, conference rooms, coffee breaks.
- [Adam] The heart sits at the center of Endeavor,
which was the first of the two new buildings
to open on campus.
In the middle of Voyager, there's this.
- We call it the mountain
and effect what we did was take that heart
and spread it open across the surface of that mountain.
- Got it.
The effect of this is
that Endeavor feels inwardly focused,
whereas Voyager is wide open.
- It's like a highrise building on three and a half floors.
- [Adam] But NVIDIA's goals for the project
to foster collaboration and maximize efficiency
for its employees called Nvidians,
bring shared purpose to these two buildings.
- The CEO Jensen was very, very involved personally
with the design here.
For them, chip design,
it's all about connections.
How do you move information around on a silicon wafer.
What they do is they design the connections first.
- [Adam] In Voyager and Endeavor,
there are workspaces for roughly 5,000 Nvidians total.
The project's leaders decided the best layout
for connecting workers was an open office.
- We always talked about the ideal way of getting everybody
to collaborate to get everybody in one room,
- [Adam] But as anyone who's worked
in a big open room knows,
noise can be a problem.
- I mean, if we're in one room with 3,500 people,
that can be incredibly noisy.
- Yeah.
- So the shaping of the roof helps mitigate the sound.
The whole thing is faceted.
So the sound as it reflects,
it's not reflecting back to you,
it's reflecting elsewhere.
And behind that, there's acoustical insulation there.
So the sound goes and gets absorbed by the roof.
- [Adam] Nvidia said findings
in this MIT study helped motivate the switch
from the cubicle filled spaces in its older offices
to what we see in these newer buildings.
- There's a visual connection,
even if there's not an audio connection,
and that allows, that quicker iteration,
allows those deeper relationships
that are important to building a very complex product.
- So you're saying,
it's not just about giving employees an opportunity
to connect and socialize,
but you're saying the actual work
that they then do together is better?
- Absolutely, yes.
- And that's just by being able to see one another.
- It starts with that.
- And unless you never leave a desk,
it would be tough to avoid running into other Nvidians here,
especially on the stairs.
- So what you see along the mountain are these cabins
and at the very top, that's the bar.
- It's a little bit of a metaphor for the work day.
Your first coffee, your second coffee,
and now you can have a drink.
(people laughing)
I love it.
- [Adam] In Voyager alone, there are 19 staircases,
some blazing trails up the mountain.
- We have way more stairs than you need technically to exit.
The elevators are pretty tucked away.
They're there, yeah.
You know, people do need elevators,
but it's not front and center,
and that's again, something I think
that's pretty unique to Nvidia.
- [Adam] But NVIDIA's paths through the office
aren't meandering.
The hallways that cut through the heart, for example,
provide shortcuts across Endeavor,
and this extends outside too.
- When we built the second part of this campus,
which is Voyager and the park in between,
we connected them at both levels
so that the trip between the two is as short as possible.
- [Adam] How short?
We tested it.
How long do you think it's gonna take us
to get from here to Voyager?
- Shouldn't take more than two minutes.
- Let's start the timer and go.
- How did we do?
- Timer stops.
We were so close,
2:30.
2:30.
2:30.
Maybe we were a little leisurely.
Maybe we were looking at the trees, but 2:30.
But getting to meetings and coworkers
is only part of optimizing efficiency.
Nvidia wanted to create the ideal working conditions,
and this is where NVIDIA's tech came in.
- One of the key principles that Nvidia uses
as a company is simulation.
We want to be able to simulate a world before we build it.
- We as architects, you probably see a lot of renderings
that we create, but there's renderings,
you know, no matter how photoreal they are,
it's still kind of an illustration
of what we think the reality's gonna be.
- [Adam] So Nvidia put its chips to work,
creating a program that could, for example,
simulate how sun would pass through the skylights.
- If I showed you those images that we had simulated
of a space like this,
it looks almost identical
to what came out right
in terms of what the feeling of this daylight is.
- [Adam] In total,
there are 511 triangular skylights dotting the ceilings
of the two buildings,
but not every area is meant to get light.
The center of the mountain is shielded from daylight,
because-
- Here on this floor, we have large labs.
In the past, most of our lab spaces were carved out
of a traditional office building.
So it was a conference room turned into a lab,
or a janitor's closet.
- [Adam] Nvidia has 42,000 square feet of lab space
in Voyager alone.
That's more than 15%
of the space in the building.
Balancing that tech in both buildings is a lot of green.
There's this 80 foot living wall in Endeavor,
and more than 14,000 plants in Voyager.
You enter Nvidia's headquarters,
a company known for GPUs and powering AI,
and the first thing you see is a huge plant wall.
- Yeah.
It becomes a relic in some ways
if they put their technology up.
- [Adam] And these buildings,
which are the first ones,
the 30-year-old company has ever owned,
suggest Nvidia doesn't plan
on becoming a relic either.
- We see Apple, Google, Meta,
now this, right?
They're really designing buildings for themselves.
They've matured to a point where,
yeah, they're like a multi-trillion dollar company.
They need spaces like this
that really kind of can take 'em to the next level.
- [Adam] Nvidia has room to grow.
It could even add a third spaceship.
Would you consider using AI in some way?
Could it possibly play a role in a future space?
- AI undoubtedly will be part
of the construction of that next building.
It's an assistant.
It extends our reach.
- I can only imagine, you know what the possibilities are
if we started design again today,
and I would hazard to guess with Nvidia,
it would be something we haven't even thought about.
- This is the kind of casual connection
that all the designers are hoping for.
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