Nvidia has introduced a new self-driving car platform powered by what it calls “advanced AI reasoning,” announcing a partnership with Mercedes-Benz to launch a fully driverless vehicle in the US soon.
The reveal came from CEO Jensen Huang during Nvidia’s CES keynote in Las Vegas, where the company unveiled its new autonomous system, Alpamayo. Unlike traditional self-driving tech that mainly reacts to preset patterns, Nvidia says this platform is built to reason through rare and complex situations.
Huang explained that Alpamayo enables cars to think through unusual scenarios, navigate challenging environments, and even explain their decisions in real time. Nvidia is working directly with Mercedes-Benz to bring the technology to market, with plans to expand beyond the US to Europe and Asia.
During the presentation, Nvidia showed footage of an AI-powered Mercedes driving through San Francisco while the passenger sat hands-free. Huang said the system learns from human drivers but goes further by explaining its actions as it drives.
The company is releasing Alpamayo as an open-source AI model on Hugging Face, allowing researchers and developers to retrain it for free — a move Nvidia believes will speed up innovation across the autonomous vehicle industry.
Huang called the project a major step for physical AI, saying the “ChatGPT moment for physical AI” is approaching. Elon Musk responded online, noting that while reaching 99% autonomy is achievable, solving the remaining edge cases is far more difficult.
Nvidia also confirmed plans to launch a robotaxi service next year with an unnamed partner and announced that its next-generation Rubin AI chips are already in production, with a release expected later this year.