Autonomous vehicles are no longer just futuristic robotic projects; today, they operate and transport passengers in the streets of many cities and countries. Companies like Waymo, WeRide, Zoox, and Apollo are among the most well-known.

At CES 2025, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang highlighted the company’s growing presence in the autonomous vehicle sector, emphasizing its potential to become the first multi-trillion-dollar robotics industry.

NVIDIA strives to equip car manufacturers with the powerful software and hardware processing solutions necessary for developing cutting-edge autonomous driving systems. To achieve this, NVIDIA leverages three core computing platforms:

1. Training Platform: Powered by the high-performance DGX systems, NVIDIA facilitates the training of autonomous driving models using vast datasets, encompassing both real-world data and synthetically generated scenarios.
2. Omniverse platform: serves as a powerful platform for simulating and generating diverse driving scenarios. Within this platform, autonomous driving systems can be rigorously tested and validated through a wide range of scenarios. It also leverages NVIDIA’s Cosmos world model to ensure the generated data remains physically accurate and logically consistent, enriching the training process.
3. In-Car Computing: For seamless on-road operation, NVIDIA provides high-performance in-car computers. These systems, powerful processors like the newly announced Thor, execute the trained driving models, processing real-time sensor data from the vehicle to determine the optimal driving path. Notably, Thor boasts a significant performance leap, achieving speeds up to 20 times faster than its predecessor, the Orin processor, currently prevalent in most autonomous vehicles.

NVIDIA collaborates with a wide range of electric vehicle manufacturers, including Tesla, Waymo, Zoox, BYD, Volvo, Xiaomi, Rivian, Lucid, and Toyota. These manufacturers utilize one of NVIDIA’s three specialized computing platforms, tailored to their specific needs. Notably, Toyota recently announced a partnership with NVIDIA to develop the next generation of intelligent driving systems. Additionally, Aurora, which focuses on developing self-driving systems for trucks, is another key partner.

This close collaboration with car manufacturers positions NVIDIA as a key driver in the development of next-generation autonomous vehicles. As a result, NVIDIA stands to significantly benefit from the burgeoning autonomous vehicle market, actively shaping its growth.

This collaborative approach accelerates the development of car manufacturers’ autonomous driving systems, eliminating the need for costly and time-consuming investments in foundational infrastructure, which would otherwise be a significant burden for each company individually.