NVIDIA Corporation has used the CES 2025 stage to nail its mark in the industry further as the leader in artificial intelligence (AI)-powered technology. In fact, the company’s accelerate computing and AI platforms are to fuel advancements across a variety of industries. The innovation in AI will definitely be critical in enabling autonomous vehicles in the future.

NVIDIA Founder and CEO Jensen Huang, during his pre-CES 2025 keynote speech, said AI is advancing at an incredible pace. He noted NVIDIA GPUs and platforms are at the heart of this transformation. Thus, enabling breakthroughs across industries, including gaming, robotics and autonomous vehicles.

“It (AI) started with perception AI — understanding images, words, and sounds. Then generative AI — creating text, images and sound,” Huang said. Now, we’re entering the era of “physical AI, AI that can proceed, reason, plan and act.”

“The autonomous vehicle revolution has arrived, and automotive will be one of the largest AI and robotics industries…NVIDIA is bringing two decades of automotive computing, safety expertise and its CUDA AV platform to transform the multitrillion-dollar auto industry,” said Huang.

First End-to-End Autonomous Driving Platform

At the heart of NVIDIA’s autonomous vehicle revolution is its latest Drive Hyperion platform. Huang said the platform integrates the new Nvidia AGX Thor system-on-a-chip (SoC), the platform integrates hardware, software, and generative AI capabilities to enable safer, smarter autonomous vehicles.

The NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Hyperion is the industry’s first and only end-to-end autonomous driving platform. Aside from NVIDIA AGX Thor and reference board design, the platform also includes the NVIDIA DriveOS automotive operating system, a sensor suite, and an active safety and level 2+ driving stack.

Huang also announced at CES the NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Hyperion has passed industry-safety assessments by TÜV SÜD and TÜV Rheinland — two of the industry’s foremost authorities for automotive-grade safety and cybersecurity. This achievement raises the bar for AV safety, innovation and performance.

Growing Collaborations

Automotive safety pioneers such as Mercedes-Benz, JLR and Volvo Cars are adopting the NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Hyperion platform, which is designed to be modular. Thus, customers can easily use what they need. It is also scalable and built to be upgradeable and compatible across future DRIVE SoC generations.

Most importantly, Huang also announced at CES that it has sealed another industry partner, Toyota Motor Corporation. The Japanese car manufacturer will be tapping NVIDIA accelerated computing and AI in building its consumer and commercial vehicle fleet.

Specifically, Toyota will build its next-generation vehicles on NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Orin, running the safety-certified NVIDIA DriveOS operating system. Thus, these vehicles will offer functionally safe, advanced driving assistance capabilities. Toyota will be joining the growing list of global mobility players developing their fleets and solutions with the NVIDIA platforms.

NVIDIA offers three core computing systems and the AI software essential for end-to-end autonomous vehicle development. NVIDIA DRIVE AGX is the in-vehicle computer. NVIDIA DGX™ processes the data from the fleet and trains AI models, and NVIDIA Omniverse™ and NVIDIA Cosmos™ running on NVIDIA OVX™ systems test and validate self-driving systems in simulation.

“The next wave of autonomous machines will rely on physical AI world foundation models to understand and interact with the real world, and NVIDIA DRIVE is purpose-built for this new era, delivering unmatched functional safety and AI.”

11 January 2024