"ChatGPT moment for physical AI": Nvidia CEO launches new AI models and chips

Driving the news: "The ChatGPT moment for physical AI is here — when machines begin to understand, reason and act in the real world," Huang said in a statement. "Robotaxis are among the first to benefit."

• Speaking onstage in Las Vegas, Huang said Alpamayo is "the world's first thinking, reasoning autonomous vehicle AI. Alpamayo is trained end-to-end, literally from camera-in to actuation-out."
• Huang also said the new Mercedes-Benz CLA will feature Nvidia's driver assistance software in what he said is the company's "first entire stack endeavor." He then showed a demo of the car driving in San Francisco, avoiding pedestrians and taking turns.
• Huang also announced the launch of the Rubin platform, composed of six chips. The products will be available for Nvidia partners in the second half of 2026, the company said.
• "There's no question in my mind now that this is going to be one of the largest robotics industries, and I'm so happy that we worked on it," Huang said. "Our vision is that someday every single car, every single truck will be autonomous."

Reality check: It will be a while until every car is autonomous. Nvidia's own plans to test a robotaxi service with a partner are slated for 2027.

• Self-driving cars could threaten millions of jobs and already face pushback from unions.

Catch up quick: The presentation follows Nvidia entering into a nonexclusive tech licensing agreement with Groq, a startup producing chips to support real-time chatbot queries.

• That deal helps strengthen Nvidia in inference, the stage at which AI models use what they've learned in the training process to produce real-world results, Axios' Megan Morrone writes.
• This phase is essential for AI to scale.

The big picture: Nvidia has long been investing in physical AI, meaning AI interfacing with the world and not just software.

• Last year, Nvidia stole the show at CES with a series of announcements, including its work in robotics and autonomous vehicles alongside new gaming chips and a smaller AI processing unit called DIGITS.
• Of course, robotics extends beyond cars. Huang was joined onstage by two BD-1 units, droids from the Star Wars universe, as he displayed and discussed an image of other robots that rely on Nvidia's tech such as Caterpillar's construction equipment and Agibot's humanoid robots.

Zoom out: Nvidia's competitors are also attending CES to stake their claims in the AI market.

• AMD CEO Lisa Su will present for CES' opening keynote later on Monday. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon is speaking as well as other executives. Intel is hosting a showcase and participating in sessions.