At Nvidia’s annual GTC conference in San Jose, Calif. today, the chipmaker announced it was teaming up with General Motors to develop next-generation cars, robots, and factories.
GM says it will apply several of Nvidia’s products to its business, such as the Omniverse 3D graphics platform which will run simulations on virtual assembly lines with an eye on reducing downtime and improving efficiency. The automaker also plans to equip its next-generation vehicles with Nvidia’s “AI brain” for advanced driver assistance and autonomous driving. And it will employ the chipmaker’s AI training software to make its vehicle assembly line robots better at certain tasks, like precision welding and material handling.
GM already uses Nvidia’s GPUs to train its AI software for simulation and validation. Today’s announcement was about expanding those use cases into improving its manufacturing operations and autonomous vehicles, GM CEO Mary Barra said in a statement. (Barra is joining Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang for a “fireside chat” during the GTC conference today.)
Image: Nvidia
“AI not only optimizes manufacturing processes and accelerates virtual testing but also helps us build smarter vehicles while empowering our workforce to focus on craftsmanship,” Barra said. “By merging technology with human ingenuity, we unlock new levels of innovation in vehicle manufacturing and beyond.”
GM will adopt Nvidia’s in-car software products to build next-gen vehicles with autonomous driving capabilities. That includes the company’s Drive AGX system-on-a-chip (SoC), similar to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving chip or Intel’s Mobileye EyeQ. The SoC runs the “safety-certified” DriveOS operating system, built on the Blackwell GPU architecture, which is capable of delivering 1,000 trillion operations per second (TOPS) of high-performance compute, the company says.
Like most automakers, GM has sunk billions of dollars in the development of fully autonomous vehicles — with mixed results. The company’s advanced driver assist feature, Super Cruise, is considered one of the safest and most capable on the market today. But its work to deploy fully autonomous vehicles has been less successful. Last year, GM pulled funding for its Cruise robotaxi company after a number of safety lapses cast doubt on the operation’s future.
Before it was shuttered, Cruise was exploring developing its own chips to reduce costs for its parent company. The robotaxi startup had been using Nvidia’s in-car computers to power its autonomous vehicles, which executives complained were too expensive.
GM hopes to improve its self-driving fortunes by selling passenger vehicles with autonomous driving capabilities — though it hasn’t said when or using what technology.
In a briefing with reporters, Ali Kani, Nvidia’s vice president and general manager of automotive, described the chipmaking company’s automotive business as still in its “infancy,” with the expectation that it will only bring in $5 billion this year. (Nvidia reported over $130 billion in revenue in 2024 for all its divisions.)
Nvidia’s chips are in less than 1 percent of the billions of cars on the road today, he added. But the future looks promising. The company is also announcing deals with Tier 1 auto supplier Magna, which helped build Sony’s Afeela concept, to use Drive AGX in the company’s next-generation advanced driver assist software.
“We believe automotive is a trillion dollar opportunity for Nvidia,” Kani said.
GM is the latest car company to strike a deal with Nvidia. The San Jose-based chipmaker has made serious in-roads in the auto industry in recent years, including partnerships with Jaguar-Land Rover, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, Lucid, Toyota, Hyundai, Zoox, and a host of Chinese EV startups.
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