Nvidia CEO Sees Multitrillion-Dollar Opportunity in Robotics

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has identified robotics as a significant growth opportunity for the chipmaker, alongside artificial intelligence (AI). At the company’s annual shareholders meeting, Huang emphasized the potential of robotics, describing it as a multitrillion-dollar growth opportunity.

Huang, 62, stated that self-driving cars would be the first major commercial application for this technology. “We have many growth opportunities across our company, with AI and robotics the two largest, representing a multitrillion-dollar growth opportunity,” Huang said.

A little over a year ago, Nvidia changed its business unit reporting structure by grouping its automotive and robotics divisions into a single line item, according to CNBC.

In May, Nvidia reported that its automotive and robotics business unit generated $567 million in quarterly sales, which accounted for about 1% of the company’s total revenue. This business unit saw a 72% increase in sales compared to the previous year.

Nvidia’s sales have surged over the past three years, driven by high demand for its data center graphics processing units (GPUs) used in sophisticated AI applications like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Total sales have increased from approximately $27 billion in fiscal 2023 to $130.5 billion last year, and analysts expect nearly $200 billion in sales this year.

While robotics currently represents a small portion of Nvidia’s business, Huang believes it will require the company’s data center AI chips for training software, as well as other chips installed in self-driving cars and robots. He highlighted Nvidia’s Drive platform, which includes chips and software for self-driving cars, and mentioned that Mercedes-Benz is using this technology. Additionally, Nvidia recently released AI models for humanoid robots called Cosmos.

Huang envisions a future with billions of robots, hundreds of millions of autonomous vehicles, and hundreds of thousands of robotic factories powered by Nvidia technology. “We’re working towards a day where there will be billions of robots, hundreds of millions of autonomous vehicles, and hundreds of thousands of robotic factories that can be powered by Nvidia technology,” he said.

Nvidia is expanding its offerings beyond just chips, providing complementary technology such as software, cloud services, and networking chips to integrate AI accelerators. Huang noted that Nvidia’s brand is evolving, and it is now better described as an “AI infrastructure” or “computing platform” provider.

“We stopped thinking of ourselves as a chip company long ago,” Huang concluded.