Nvidia will power Toyota’s next-gen self-driving cars

By Christian de Looper Published January 7, 2025

Nvidia has had a huge year, but it’s seemingly about to get even better for the company. At CES 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveiled not only its next-generation GPUs, but also its plan to expand into the automotive world.

That master plan doesn’t just involve the launch of new automotive-focused GPUs; it also includes expanded shipping of its vehicle-focused software called DriveOS. In fact, the company already has some partners working on next-generation vehicles that use DriveOS software, chief among them being Toyota.

To be clear, DriveOS isn’t necessarily focused on infotainment software. Instead, it’s an autonomous driving platform that will essentially serve as the foundation for Toyota’s self-driving vehicle ambitions. According to Nvidia, the goal of DriveOS is to provide safe AI processing in real time and integrate that processing into other software within the vehicle.

Nvidia has actually been working toward the self-driving space for some time now, under a project that it calls Cosmos. Cosmos works in tandem with another Nvidia project called Omniverse, which is a physics simulation tool that creates simulations that Cosmos then turns into photorealistic imagery to train AI systems. Essentially, Nvidia is generating situations to train its AI systems instead of having to conduct millions of miles of real-world training.

The partnership between Nvidia and Toyota isn’t actually new. Toyota has been working with Nvidia for a while, largely through using its DGX supercomputers used to train AI models for future iterations of self-driving cars. The partnership will eventually involve Toyota also using Nvidia’s AGX AI computer, the current generation of which is called Thor AGX.

Nvidia also announced partnerships with Aurora, an autonomous vehicle startup, and Continental, an automotive supplier. The company says thiswill involve the deployment of driverless trucks.

The partnership with Toyota is particularly interesting, though. Toyota has been seen to be lagging behind the competition a little when it comes to adopting new technologies, largely stemming from the fact that the company was slow to adopt battery EVs.

Regardless, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the large chipmakers will have a massive role in future vehicles, whether it be through powering the processing behind all the data that sensors collect, or through delivering a smooth and responsive consumer-facing software experience.