Nvidia is building out an automotive tech business. Pictured here are its autonomous vehicle test cars at the company's auto garage in Santa Clara, California, June 5, 2023.
Nvidia on Monday said it is working with robotaxi operators in hopes of having them use the company's AI chips and Drive AV software stack to power their fleets of autonomous vehicles as soon as 2027.
Around that time, the chipmaker said that it hopes to power partner deployment of "Level 4" robotaxis, meaning vehicles capable of driving without human intervention in pre-defined regions, Xinzhou Wu, Nvidia's vice president of automotive, said at a self-driving demonstration in San Francisco last month.
"We will probably start with a limited availability but work with the partner for us to get our footing," Wu said.
Since 2015, Nvidia has offered chips and other technology for cars under the Drive brand name, but that remains a small part of the company's business. Automotive and robotics chips accounted for just $592 million in sales in the quarter ended in October, or about 1% of Nvidia's total revenue. Nvidia announced a robotaxi partnership with Uber in October.
The chipmaker said in December that it had developed software that can power a self-driving car and that Mercedes-Benz models to be released in late 2026 will be able to use Nvidia's technology to navigate cities like San Francisco.
Self-driving cars remain one of the primary areas where Nvidia can show growth outside of AI infrastructure. CEO Jensen Huang has said that robotics — including self-driving cars — is the company's second most important growth category after artificial intelligence.
"We imagine that someday, a billion cars on the road will all be autonomous," Huang said at a launch event on Monday at the CES conference in Las Vegas. "You could either have it be a robotaxi that you're orchestrating and renting from somebody, or you could own it."
In addition to chips that go inside self-driving cars, Nvidia sells access to its famed AI chips as well as its simulation software to automotive companies so they can train self-driving models and develop technology.
Nvidia says that car makers can use its Drive AGX Thor automotive computer, which costs about $3,500 per chip, to save on research and development costs and get self-driving features to market faster. Nvidia said it works with car makers to tune its technology, such as determining how hard the car should accelerate, for specific vehicles.
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