Nvidia developed VR to simulate and design its $370 million headquarters

Nvidia‘s new headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., is shaped like a triangle, and that goes to the heart of what the company is all about. Triangles, after all, are the polygonal building blocks for 3D graphics images, and Nvidia has become the world’s largest stand-alone company making 3D graphics chips.

The $370 million building reflects a trend in Silicon Valley, where the most successful tech companies are crafting their buildings to reflect their own unique personalities, to attract the best talent, and inspire employees to collaborate. Sometimes, these projects can be the perfect expression of a company’s vision, and other times, they seem like excessive vanity projects that miss the mark. And in Nvidia’s case, one of the unique things is that Nvidia’s own graphics chips, virtual reality tools, and visualization software became essential in simulating the headquarters. After viewing what the building would look like in virtual reality, the company and its architects made changes to the final design.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.