Nvidia, the global chipmaker that just became the first company to surpass $4 trillion in stock market value, is adding to its expansive real estate holdings to support an internal growth spurt.
The Silicon Valley conglomerate, one of the corporate cornerstones of the booming artificial intelligence industry, is preparing to double its hub in Austin, Texas, after signing on for nearly 100,000 square feet in a recently completed office development in the heart of the city's local tech scene.
Nvidia's lease will mean the company is set to anchor the One Uptown building near The Domain, a neighborhood in North Austin already home to tech giants such as Dell, Google, Amazon and Cisco.
The 99,370-square-foot agreement with Brandywine Realty Trust, the landlord and developer for the larger Uptown ATX mixed-use project that includes One Uptown, will fill a significant portion of the building's office space. It will also help improve its leased rate, which was a little more than 10% at the start of the year, according to information filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Nvidia's role at the nucleus of the global artificial intelligence boom helped make it the first company in history to reach a stock market value of $4 trillion, beating out rivals such as Apple and Microsoft that have previously held the title of the world's most valuable corporation. The stock got a boost on Tuesday on expectations that Nvidia may be allowed to sell in China after it has faced restrictions resulting from U.S. national security concerns.
The company's expansion has translated into demand for physical office space to support its ongoing growth, fueling optimism across the real estate market that other tech giants will emerge from their own leasing hibernations to help boost the recovering office sector.
Representatives for Nvidia did not immediately respond to CoStar News' requests for comment, while Brandywine and CBRE — the listing brokerage for the One Uptown project — declined to provide additional details.
Exponential growth
Nvidia is set to fill the first, 13th and 14th floors of the 14-story building, according to people with knowledge of the arrangement. The lease is scheduled to kick off in November.
The company began its search for more Austin office space late last year and was rumored to be shopping around for as much as 300,000 square feet. While its One Uptown space is just a slice of that initially anticipated search, the deal still represents a significant expansion for the company compared to its current footprint in the city.
Nvidia has leased just shy of 52,000 square feet at 11001 Lakeline Blvd. on the outskirts of Round Rock, Texas, for more than 15 years, according to CoStar data. It isn't yet clear whether the chipmaker will retain that space or consolidate its regional workforce at the new address, which is about a 20-minute drive away.
The chipmaker has raced to keep up with exponential growth over the past decade as it becomes increasingly dominant in AI as well as other segments of the tech industry, such as data centers, gaming and manufacturing. While its chips were primarily used in graphic processors and computer equipment in its early days, Nvidia's revenue has soared alongside demand for products including its graphics processing units, which power the AI industry.
It purchased its Santa Clara headquarters complex in early 2024 for just shy of $375 million, a portfolio deal spanning seven buildings and roughly 626,500 square feet. It followed that up with a full-building lease in San Jose, California, late last year.
And in May, it closed a $123 million deal to scoop up an office and research campus several blocks away, a 10-building portfolio deal that added another more than 250,000 square feet to the company's global real estate footprint.
Between 2018 and 2022, Nvidia also developed and opened two office buildings totaling about 1.2 million square feet in Santa Clara: The Endeavor and The Voyager. What's more, the company in May 2022 signed a separate full-building lease at 2421 Mission College Blvd., also in Santa Clara, to add another 103,000 square feet to its Silicon Valley footprint.
After roughly a decade of fueling record-high spikes in rent growth and demand — often leasing up space before it was even built — tech giants in recent years made deep cuts to their property holdings by shutting office locations, subleasing out unwanted space and walking away from future investments.
The technology industry appears to be back in growth mode after a period of shrinking their real estate footprints, with companies such as Apple, Snap, LinkedIn, Amazon, Walmart's tech unit and Pinterest, among others, gradually flipping back into office-growth mode.
Leasing among tech companies across the United States rose by more than 21% through the first quarter of the year compared to the same period in 2024, according to CBRE data, a spike that accounted for just shy of 8 million square feet worth of deals. That activity represented a roughly 16.5% share of total office leasing volume nationally and builds off the momentum tech companies generated last year when leasing accounted for about 18% of all U.S. leasing.
By comparison, leasing among tech companies represented a little more than 14% of the total national leasing volume in 2023, according to CBRE, a possible signal of the industry's demand for office space.
Updated July 15 to add that Nvidia stock rose Tuesday on expectations of being allowed to make sales in China.