Luca’s breathtaking day at the office

A day of meetings, calls, and lab visits may sound like work for most of us, but for 18-year-old Luca it was a wish come true.

Luca, who lives near Toronto, Canada, attended his first computer science summer camp at age 8. His budding interest in technology only grew from there and he began to study programming, 3D modeling, and 3D printing. He even built his own gaming rigs and, together with his dad, programmed the water heater in the family hot tub to maintain a comfortable temperature and decrease the time needed to warm it.

NVIDIA—an accelerated computing company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, quickly became Luca’s favorite tech company. He loves their products for gaming, and he’s also drawn to the company culture.

“Everyone is driven to see the same outcome and comes together to make it happen,” Luca says of the team at NVIDIA. “Everything is designed for collaboration.”

Luca is such a fan of NVIDIA that he even carved the company’s logo out of a piece of wood using a computer numerical control machine.

So, when Luca, who has Hodgkin’s lymphoma, found out he would get a wish, he immediately thought of immersing himself in the tech and culture at NVIDIA. “NVIDIA is his Disneyland,” his mom, Cassandra, explains.

Our Make-A-Wish Greater Bay Area chapter assisted Make-A-Wish Canada and the team at NVIDIA in planning the perfect wish day for Luca. The NVIDIA team kept the day’s agenda a secret—surprising Luca with tours of the demo room and robotics lab, a chat with the University Recruiting team, a ride in a self-driving car, and a video call with NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang.

Ahead of Lofranco’s visit, the NVIDIA team sent him a box of swag including a hoodie, a hat, and a custom NVIDIA badge.

Once he arrived on campus, NVIDIA volunteers welcomed and whisked Lofranco off on a campus tour, followed by a meeting with the solutions architect team. Next, a visit to the robotics lab helped satisfy Lofranco’s “maker” curiosity. He saw the test robots for developing an AI platform and was soon directing a robot arm to stack colored blocks.

After learning that Lofranco’s favorite foods include lobster, tiramisu and Kit Kat candy bars, the café team prepared a special menu for him and all employees in the office that day. Everyone enjoyed a lobster roll pop-up station in the campus park and tiramisu-flavored ice cream with assorted toppings, including Kit Kat pieces.

With so much to soak in, Luca described his wish day at NVIDIA as “unfathomable,” and that was before his video call with Huang, which lasted 45 minutes.

After a conversation that spanned NVIDIA’s origins, many near failures and innovation, Huang gifted Luca a GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition GPU and shared some sound advice: “Keep playing video games—but make sure to prioritize your homework.”

Capping the fun-filled wish day was a visit to the auto lab and a spin in one of NVIDIA’s self-driving test cars. “It was breathtaking,” Luca says of the entire experience.