Overview
From September 19 to 28, I traveled to California. After working at NVIDIA Taiwan for two and a half years, I wanted to see the headquarters for myself, and also to get a feel for the engineering and startup culture in the Bay Area. During the trip, I met several friends who work or run startups in Silicon Valley, and talking with them taught me a lot about the place. Here I write down the parts of the trip that meant the most to me.
NVIDIA
The first major stop of the trip was NVIDIA's headquarters in Santa Clara. NVIDIA has several buildings there, and the two most iconic are Endeavor (opened in 2017) and Voyager (opened in 2022). Both are designed around natural light, greenery, and openness, with glass everywhere. I also had the opportunity to meet several colleagues at the US headquarters whom I work with regularly. Over lunch, we chatted about how they spend their days off, from hiking to car racing.
Me at the entrance of Voyager:
We also had the chance to invite Colin Su, now the CEO of EvoSports, for a coffee talk. Back in 2024, he was still working at Microsoft in Seattle and gave me a tour of the headquarters there. When I learned he was on a business trip in San Francisco, I reached out to see if he had time to meet us at the NVIDIA headquarters, which made the visit especially meaningful. Colin is energetic and knowledgeable, and I was grateful for the chance to hear his thoughts on entrepreneurship, AI workflows, value creation, and mentorship.
The view outside the Voyager building:
The stage inside Voyager used for company meetings and events, the very spot where Jensen gives his talks:
The view from the second floor of Voyager. One perk of working at the NVIDIA headquarters is that there are always open seats to work from anywhere:
Nuro
On the second day, I visited Nuro to meet Tony Chen, a friend I first got to know online who recently graduated from the University of Washington. Seattle was the first place I ever visited in the United States, so hearing about his time there brought back many memories, including the beautiful UW campus.
Tony is friendly and ambitious. He shared a lot about what is happening in the Bay Area, especially the startup culture here. Nuro was founded by former Waymo engineers, so it was a great chance to hear first-hand from someone working directly in the autonomous driving industry.
The entrance of Nuro:
The Lucid Gravity Robotaxi, a vehicle built by Lucid, powered by Nuro's self-driving technology, and available exclusively on Uber:
That evening, we had dinner in downtown Mountain View, joined by Luis Hsu, who works at Ambarella in Santa Clara and serves as a board member of the NCKU Alumni Association - Northern California. He shared many stories about organizing events for the association, which I personally found very interesting.
Waymo
Something unique about California is seeing Waymo robotaxis driving everywhere, and it was one of the things that fascinated me most here. The ride was smooth overall, but I could feel a small bump every time it braked to a stop. Nevertheless, the future is already here: the most innovative self-driving companies, from Waymo and Nuro/Lucid to Tesla's Cybercab, are all based in the United States, and their technology is already on the road.
IrisGo.AI
I also met Lman Chu, an entrepreneur and now co-founder and COO of IrisGo.AI. I first got to know Lman almost ten years ago, when I had the chance to demonstrate some of my university projects at an event he organized, and I later provided some lightweight support for one of his businesses at Computex 2024.
IrisGo.AI builds an AI assistant for AI PCs that learns a user's workflows and automates repetitive tasks across applications. IrisGo.AI works closely with AI Fund, the venture fund founded by Andrew Ng, which also led their seed round. It was a unique experience to see first-hand how an early-stage startup operates here in Silicon Valley.
Computer History Museum
One of the things that shaped my career the most was reading Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy in high school. It was the book that gave me my first impression of computer technology and its free spirit, and Silicon Valley has been a place I wanted to visit ever since. The Computer History Museum is something like a spiritual temple to me. Before this trip, I never thought I would get the chance to see historical artifacts like the DEC PDP-11 (the machine that early UNIX ran on), ENIAC, and Enigma in person.
The spirit of UNIX, one of the earliest pieces of software to promote the freedom of software:
ENIAC, one of the earliest electronic computers:
Enigma, the German military cipher machine, which was believed to be unbreakable even for some time after World War II:
The Homebrew Computer Club, the early hobbyist group that gave birth to the personal computer revolution:
I also stopped by the display of Shakey, one of the earliest robots built for research on autonomous systems. It was special to me because Shakey appears in the lectures of Planning, Search, and Reasoning Under Uncertainty, a course I took at UT Austin:
Of course, I had to take a picture at the corner dedicated to NVIDIA and its rise after the AI boom:
Stanford University
Besides the tech companies, I also visited Stanford University, located in the heart of Silicon Valley. I checked the course schedule for the day of our visit and found that Andrew Ng would be teaching Deep Learning (CS230) that day. Since high school, I have always enjoyed studying online courses, especially those offered by top universities like Stanford and MIT. Getting to sit in the classroom of one of these courses in person made this a special experience for me.
Andrew Ng's Deep Learning class, held at the NVIDIA Auditorium:
After the class, we walked around the Stanford campus. I have to say that Stanford is the most beautiful campus I have visited so far, and the campus itself is well worth a trip.
Tesla Diner
After the Bay Area, we also went to Los Angeles. The Tesla Diner had long been on my list of places to visit. One pity is that the Optimus robots only show up occasionally, with appearances announced on their X account. The diner also has plenty of Supercharger stalls for Tesla drivers to charge while they eat.
The giant screen outside the Tesla Diner playing a classic movie:
The vibe inside the Tesla Diner:
An Optimus robot on display inside the Tesla Diner:
Burger and fries:
Espresso con panna and iced americano:
