Nvidia CEO Jensen Hwang delivers the keynote address at the company’s annual GTC developer conference at the SAP Center in San Jose, California, on March 16, 2026.
Josh Edelson | afp | fake images
NVIDIA is expanding agreements for its autonomous vehicle development business to Hyundai Motor, NissanEngine and Isuzu, as well as Chinese automakers BYD and Geely, the software and chip giant announced Monday.
The new deals are for Nvidia’s “Drive Hyperion” platform for AV. The system helps companies develop and deploy autonomous driving and driver assistance capabilities for “Level 4” autonomous vehicles, which are capable of driving without human intervention in predefined areas or circumstances.
“We’ve been working on autonomous vehicles for a long time. The ChatGPT moment of autonomous vehicles has arrived,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Monday during the company’s GTC conference. “We now know we can successfully drive cars autonomously, and today we announced four new partners for Nvidia’s robotaxi-ready platform… The number of robotaxi-ready cars in the future will be incredible.”
No vehicle sold to consumers today is capable of driving itself without human supervision or intervention, but some companies, such as Alphabet Waymo offers transportation fleets with Level 4 autonomous vehicles, also known as robotaxis. Most vehicles on sale today are considered Level 2 and drivers must continually monitor the systems.
Drive Hyperion is part of what Nvidia calls its “end-to-end” AV platform that includes data center training, large-scale simulations and in-vehicle computing. The company does not produce or sell autonomous vehicles or many of the components necessary to operate such vehicles.
Nvidia’s current customers for Drive Hyperion include many autonomous vehicle companies such as Aurora and Nuro, as well as other more consumer-oriented companies such as Sony Group, Uber TechnologiesFather Jeep stellantis and electric vehicle manufacturer Lucid Group.
Autonomous vehicles are important for Nvidia, as autonomous vehicles remain one of the main areas where the chipmaker can show growth outside of artificial intelligence.
Many believe AI could be key to the proliferation of autonomous vehicles, which Wall Street analysts and auto executives have pointed to as a multibillion-dollar growth industry.
The startups join a growing list of such alliances for Nvidia, as the chipmaker and the auto and technology industries try to capitalize on and proliferate AVs after years of failed robotaxis ventures.
Waymo has led the audiovisual industry for years, while others like teslaUber and Amazon Zoox tries to catch up.
general motorsCruise, which was previously considered a leader along with Waymo, dissolved amid controversy after a pedestrian was dragged by one of its vehicles in San Francisco. GM spent more than $10 billion on Cruise before ending robotaxi operations in 2024.
-CNBC Katie Tarasova contributed to this report.
