The two firms had previously revealed plans to roll out 100,000 vehicles powered by Nvidia’s Drive Hyperion self-driving platform during Nvidia’s GTC conference in Washington, D.C., in October. The latest announcement, made at the GTC event in San Jose, California, now outlines a timeline and initial locations for the launch of the service, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
According to Nvidia, the autonomous vehicle program is expected to expand beyond California in the future, eventually reaching 28 cities across four continents.
Alongside Uber, several other ride-hailing companies are also adopting Nvidia’s technology for autonomous driving systems. Nvidia said Lyft (LYFT), Estonia-based Bolt, and Singapore’s Grab are integrating its platforms to support their own self-driving initiatives.
Nvidia’s Drive Hyperion platform combines a production-ready computer system with a suite of sensors designed to enable Level 4 autonomous driving. Autonomous vehicles are categorized on a scale from Level 0, representing traditional vehicles without automation, to Level 5, which refers to fully autonomous cars.
Level 4 vehicles can drive themselves in specific environments or conditions, although a human driver can still intervene if necessary.
In addition to the Uber partnership update, Nvidia also introduced Alpamayo 1.5, the newest version of its AI models designed for autonomous driving. The company said the updated model includes an interactive reasoning system capable of analyzing driving video, motion data, navigation instructions, and natural language prompts.
Based on these inputs, the system can generate driving trajectories while explaining its reasoning process. Nvidia says this capability allows developers to create detailed driving scenarios using language-based prompts to train autonomous systems to respond to complex or unusual situations.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang described the rise of autonomous vehicles as a major technological shift, calling it the beginning of a multitrillion-dollar robotics industry.
He said the Nvidia Hyperion platform and Alpamayo reasoning models enable vehicles to better understand their surroundings, evaluate complex situations, and act safely, helping make scalable Level 4 autonomy possible.
Nvidia and Uber face growing competition in the autonomous mobility sector. In November, Google-backed Waymo announced that its robotaxi service can operate on freeways in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. The company also revealed plans to launch services in Dallas, Orlando, Houston, and San Antonio, and expand to London this year.
Meanwhile, Amazon-backed Zoox recently said it will expand operations to Phoenix and Dallas, bringing its presence to 10 cities. The company already offers free rides in parts of San Francisco and Las Vegas.
Tesla (TSLA) also operates autonomous driving services in Austin and San Francisco, though fully driverless rides without safety drivers are currently available only in Austin.
