General Motors is turning to Nvidia to help bring AI to the physical world in an expanded collaboration designed to touch every aspect of the automaker’s business, including factories, robots, and self-driving cars.
Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang, who announced the partnership Tuesday during his keynote at the company’s GTC conference in San Jose, said the time for autonomous vehicles has arrived.
“We’re looking forward to building with GM AI in all three areas,” he said on stage. “AI for manufacturing, so they can revolutionize the way they manufacture; AI for enterprise, so they can revolutionize the way they work to design cars and simulate cars, and then also AI for in the car.”
The deal means Nvidia will provide AI infrastructure — essentially GPUs — for GM as well as help the automaker build its own AI, according to Huang.
Nvidia has a decades-long relationship with the automotive and autonomous vehicle industry, supplying GPUs to companies like Tesla, Wayve, and Waymo for use in data centers or their vehicles. Nvidia has also developed an autonomous vehicle platform for automakers that includes an operating system called DriveOS to provide real-time AI processing and integration of advanced driving and cockpit features. Toyota announced earlier this year plans to equip next-generation vehicles with automated driving capabilities powered by Nvidia’s Drive AGX Orin supercomputer and safety-focused operating system, DriveOS.
“We work with the car industry however the car industry would like us to work with them,” Huang said during the keynote. “We build all three computers: the training computer, the simulation computer, and the robotics computer (the self-driving car computer) — all the software stack that sits on top of it, the models and algorithms just as we do with all of the other industries that I’ve demonstrated.”
GM plans to work with Nvidia to build custom AI systems using several of the tech giant’s products. GM did not disclose the financial value of the deal.
GM will use Nvidia Omniverse with Cosmos to train AI manufacturing models to help it improve help it build next-generation factories and robotics. Using Omniverse, GM will be able to build a digital twin of its factories — and even assembly lines — to virtually test new production processes without disrupting existing vehicle production. The effort will include training robotics platforms GM is already using for operations such as material handling and transport, and precision welding.
The automaker will also use Nvidia Drive AGX for its in-vehicle hardware for future advanced driver-assistance systems and in-cabin enhanced safety driving experiences. The automaker recently stopped funding its commercial robotaxi development business in a pivot that has shifted resources towards its hands-off advanced driver assistance system known as Super Cruise. GM is in the process of absorbing its self-driving car subsidiary Cruise and combining it with its own efforts to develop driver assistance features — and eventually fully autonomous personal vehicles.
GM’s relationship with Nvidia isn’t new. The Detroit-based automaker has used Nvidia GPUs to train AI models for simulation and validation. The expanded deal now includes using Nvidia AI products to focus on improving automotive plant design and operations.
