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Nvidia has unveiled a new artificial intelligence platform it says could advance the future of self-driving cars, as the chipmaker deepens its push beyond data centres and into physical AI. Speaking at the CES technology show in Las Vegas, chief executive Jensen Huang introduced Alpamayo, a "reasoning" AI system designed to help autonomous vehicles think through complex and unfamiliar driving situations.
According to Huang, Alpamayo allows cars to analyse rare scenarios, make safer decisions in crowded or unpredictable environments, and explain the reasoning behind each manoeuvre. Demonstrating the technology on stage, Nvidia showed a Mercedes-Benz vehicle navigating the streets of San Francisco while its passenger kept their hands off the wheel.
The system has been developed in partnership with Mercedes-Benz, with Huang confirming that a driverless version of the Mercedes-Benz CLA powered by Nvidia's technology will launch in the United States in the coming months, followed by Europe and Asia. He described the project as a major learning experience that has helped Nvidia refine how it supports partners building robotic systems.
Industry analysts say the announcement reinforces Nvidia's growing influence across both AI hardware and software. Paolo Pescatore of PP Foresight said Alpamayo marks a shift from Nvidia being primarily a chip supplier to becoming a full platform provider for physical AI ecosystems.
At the core of the platform is Alpamayo 1, a 10-billion-parameter vision-language-action model capable of breaking down driving problems into steps before selecting the safest response. Nvidia has released the model as open source on Hugging Face, allowing researchers and automakers to retrain or adapt it for their systems.
The move places Nvidia more directly in competition with companies such as Tesla, whose Autopilot and Full Self-Driving software rely on similar ambitions. Tesla chief executive Elon Musk responded online by warning that while achieving high performance is possible, solving rare edge cases remains the hardest challenge.
Nvidia also confirmed plans to launch a robotaxi service next year with an unnamed partner. Shares in the company edged higher after the presentation. Nvidia, currently the world's most valuable listed company, also revealed that its next-generation Rubin AI chips are already in production and are expected to reduce energy use and development costs later this year.
