Nvidia (NVDA) is looking to keep its hot streak rolling from 2024 and into 2025 with a number of AI-centric announcements at CES in Las Vegas on Monday. CEO Jensen Huang took the stage during the company’s keynote, laying out his vision for everything from AI software that will power robots and self-driving cars to a new AI supercomputer that fits on your desk.
Nvidia’s stock price jumped as high as 4.7% ahead of the keynote on Monday as Wall Street braced for the AI darling’s latest offerings. The company’s stock is up a whopping 205% over the last 12 months thanks to its prescient investments in AI hardware and its CUDA software, which allows developers to use its chips to run AI programs.
The latest announcements focused on how programmers can take advantage of Nvidia’s existing hardware, its Hopper and Blackwell platforms. The company could debut its next-generation chip during its GTC conference in March.
During Monday’s event Huang showed off Nvidia’s newest Blackwell-based chip, the GB10 superchip. It’s a pint-sized version of the GB200 superchip, which combines a Grace central processing unit (CPU) with two Blackwell graphics processing units (GPUs). The smaller GB10 pairs a Grace CPU and Blackwell GPU.
Nvidia says the chip will be available in a small desktop system called Project DIGITS and will come with 128GB of memory and 4TB of storage. The company says the setup is powerful enough for researchers interested in “prototyping, fine-tuning, and running large AI models.”
Project DIGITS will start at $3,000 and be available in May from Nvidia and its OEM partners.
Beyond its new chip and desktop, Nvidia also debuted its open model license Cosmos platform for developing physical AI systems. The platform uses world foundation models, or WFMs, which are AI models that simulate conditions in the real world. Physical AI systems include technologies like humanoid robots and self-driving cars.
The idea is for companies to use Cosmos to help develop the software needed to power robots and self-driving cars, by simulating various usage scenarios in a virtual setting without having to use pricey robots or putting cars on the road in the real world.
“The ChatGPT moment for robotics is coming,” Huang said in a statement.
“Like large language models, world foundation models are fundamental to advancing robot and AV development, yet not all developers have the expertise and resources to train their own,” Huang explained. “We created Cosmos to democratize physical AI and put general robotics in reach of every developer.”
In addition to Cosmos, Nvidia debuted its Isaac GROOT Blueprint for training humanoid robots. The software, which connects to Apple’s Vision Pro headset, allows a developer to perform and record specific movements they want to teach a robot. Isaac GROOT Blueprint then takes those movements and synthesizes them, providing the robot with an enormous set of movements based on the developer’s original motions.
Engineers often have to teach humanoid robots to move by performing repetitive movements that the bot can follow and understand on its own. It’s normally a time-consuming affair, but with the Isaac GROOT Blueprint, Nvidia says developers will be able to cut down on the time needed to create future humanoid robotics systems.
On the automotive front, Nvidia announced that Toyota will begin using the company’s DRIVE AGX Orin chip and the Nvidia DriveOS operating system to power the automaker’s advanced driver assistance features in its next-generation vehicles.
Nvidia also said it has entered into an agreement with automotive company Continental and self-driving truck company Aurora that will see the transportation firms use Nvidia’s DRIVE hardware and DriveOS software alongside Aurora’s level 4 autonomous driving system called Aurora Driver. Continental and Aurora plan to bring autonomous trucks hauling freight to roads beginning in 2027.
Nvidia’s Automotive and Robotics segments still make up a relatively small portion of its overall revenue. In Q3, the division brought in $449 million compared to its Data Center business, which brought in $30.8 billion of its $35.1 billion in total revenue. That said, Automotive and Robotics is growing, with sales climbing 72% year over year in the quarter.
Finally, Nvidia announced a number of AI software and hardware offerings, including its AI Blueprints, agentic AI apps that will allow developers to build and launch their own custom AI agents.
AI agents are specialized AI programs that can perform multistep tasks across different apps. Companies like Google and Microsoft are betting big on AI agents as the next big shift in enterprise and consumer AI thanks to their ability to automate more mundane tasks like importing information from emails into spreadsheets.
Nvidia also said users running its latest RTX graphics cards will now be able to launch foundation models using its Nvidia NIM platform. Essentially, the company is enabling AI capabilities for standard graphics cards via its NIM service, which should open up broader opportunities for software developers, helping it to court more customers moving forward.
Email Daniel Howley at dhowley@yahoofinance.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley.
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Bridget Roy is a news writer for Gibbs Press, where she covers sports, education, and tech. She's also a dedicated educator and advocate for children's rights. In her free time, Bridget likes to read, watch movies with her family, and play video games. She says that while she loves all of those things, they pale in comparison to her love of writing.