Huang declares Israel Nvidia’s “second home” with record-breaking campus investment
The 90-dunam mega-campus in Kiryat Tivon is set to house more than 10,000 employees.
Now it is official: Nvidia’s spacecraft is set to land in Kiryat Tivon. After a five-month process in which the world’s most valuable company examined several alternatives for establishing a new mega-campus in Israel, Nvidia has chosen Kiryat Tivon. The company, currently valued at about $4.3 trillion, will purchase the land from the state for approximately NIS 90 million (approximately $28 million), making it the first international technology company in Israel to build a major campus on land it owns. Until now, the campuses of multinational giants such as Intel, Microsoft, Google, and Meta have all been located in leased properties.
The decision signals an extraordinary level of commitment by Nvidia to Israel, which has already become the company’s second-largest development center outside the United States.
With the official announcement, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang said: “Israel is home to some of the world’s most brilliant technologists and has become NVIDIA’s second home. Our new campus will be a place where our teams can collaborate, invent, and build the future of AI. This investment reflects our deep and enduring commitment to our families in Israel and their unique contributions to the AI era.”
Amit Krig, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering and Israel Site Leader, added: “NVIDIA’s growth in Israel has been remarkable, driven by the extraordinary talent and engineering excellence of our teams. We’re grateful to Jensen and NVIDIA’s leadership for their trust and support in this next phase of growth, and to the Ministry of Treasury and the Israel Land Authority for their partnership. We look forward to bringing this vision to life and continuing to build the future of AI.”
The new campus, designed in the shape of a “spaceship,” similar to Nvidia’s headquarters in Silicon Valley, will be built on approximately 90 dunams and span about 160,000 square meters. This is equivalent in size to Nvidia’s two California “spaceships” combined and will be considered the largest technology campus in Israel.
The complex will include a park, cafés, restaurants, and shared workspaces, effectively functioning as a self-contained city, in line with the campus models of companies such as Google and Apple in the U.S. It is expected to accommodate more than 10,000 employees. Construction is slated to begin about a year after Nvidia completes its planning processes, with occupancy expected in 2031. The estimated cost of the project runs into the billions of shekels.
This will be Nvidia’s first “spaceship-style” campus outside the U.S., although the company is also advancing plans for a similar site in Taiwan, near the factories that manufacture its GPUs, which currently dominate the global artificial intelligence chip market.
Nvidia currently employs around 5,000 people in Israel, with its largest site located in Yokneam, built on the foundations of Mellanox, which Nvidia acquired in 2020 for $7 billion. The company also occupies roughly half the floors of the Rubinstein Towers in Tel Aviv and recently announced an expansion in Be’er Sheva, where it plans to employ hundreds of workers in the Gav-Yam high-tech park.
Beyond office space, Nvidia operates a server farm in Israel and the Israel-1 supercomputer, ranked among the world’s 50 most powerful. On Wednesday, Calcalist revealed that Nvidia is also planning to establish another server farm, the largest in Israel, adjacent to its existing facility in the Mevo Carmel industrial zone. The total investment in that project is estimated at $1.5 billion and will be shared between Nvidia and the real estate company Mega Or, with which it is in advanced negotiations.
Nvidia Israel currently has about 400 open positions. Israel is now the company’s second-largest global center, with a hiring pace exceeded only by the United States and surpassing Nvidia’s growth rates in both Europe and India.
The Kiryat Tivon site was selected from a long list of proposals Nvidia received after publishing a public request for information in July. While the state sought to steer the company toward more northern locations, such as Kiryat Ata, to support areas affected by the war, Nvidia ultimately preferred to remain close to its existing operations in Yokneam and the server farms in Mevo Carmel.
The final decision was made last week during a visit by Nvidia Israel executives, led by Amit Krig, to the company’s U.S. headquarters. During that visit, Jensen Huang also met Avinan Or, an Nvidia employee who was kidnapped on October 7 and released in the most recent deal.
Nvidia had been exploring options for a northern campus for some time, but slow progress with government agencies prompted the company to launch a public land-search process. This, in turn, placed pressure on the Israel Land Authority, which moved swiftly to accommodate the company. This week, the government approved the land allocation at a discount of about NIS 70 million ($21.7M), without Nvidia having requested one. The approval required signatures from the defense and finance ministers, as Israeli law mandates such approval for land transactions with entities not registered in Israel.
Documents published by the Israel Land Authority indicate that the site could be expanded in the future. Even in its current form, it is significantly larger than any other campus operated by an Israeli or international company. By comparison, Nvidia’s existing Yokneam headquarters, which houses around 3,000 employees, spans only about 30,000 square meters.
