'The Decade of Autonomous Vehicles': Nvidia CEO Predicts Major Growth in Robotics, Self-Driving Cars

Key Points

• At VivaTech, NVIDIA unveiled the Drive platform and Cosmos Predict-2 AI model—trained on 20,000 hours of real-world driving data—to help automakers build self-driving cars that perform reliably in fog, rain and other challenging conditions.
• CEO Jensen Huang predicts “this is going to be the decade of AV, robotics, autonomous machines,” forecasting that the global autonomous vehicle market will accelerate tremendously over the next several years.
• NVIDIA’s automotive division generated $329 million in revenue—up 11% year-over-year—powered by its self-driving technology, including Chinese EV maker Xiaomi’s SU7 sedan built on NVIDIA’s platform.
• Self-driving services like Waymo now handle 250,000 paid robotaxi trips per week, with customers paying an average of $9–$11 more per ride than traditional ride-hailing options.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang predicts the global autonomous vehicle and robotics industries are set to see significant growth in the next few years.

"This is going to be the decade of AV [autonomous vehicles], robotics, autonomous machines," Huang told CNBC in an interview at the VivaTech conference in Paris on Thursday.

At VivaTech, Nvidia debuted Nvidia Drive, an autonomous vehicle development platform allowing automakers to build self-driving cars. The company also released Cosmos Predict-2, a new AI model trained on 20,000 hours of real-world driving data, which allows self-driving cars to perform well in challenging weather conditions like fog and rain.

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Nvidia sells both hardware and software products for autonomous vehicles, including the Nvidia DGX software platform, which trains self-driving cars on different driving scenarios.

^{Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at the VivaTech trade show. Photo by Chesnot/Getty Images}

Huang has predicted growth in the autonomous vehicle market for some time. In January, he said in a keynote at the consumer tech conference CES that "the autonomous vehicle revolution is here."

"You're going to see the pace of AV development increasing tremendously over the next several years," he said at the event.

Last month, Huang told Yahoo Finance that one day "every single car" will have an autonomous component.

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Self-driving cars are becoming more common in the U.S., with Google-owned Waymo providing 250,000 paid robotaxi trips per week in cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Austin.

Customers are willing to pay more for the robotaxi experience. According to a report shared with TechCrunch on Thursday, Waymo rides are more expensive than Lyft and Uber rides, but riders pay more anyway. The average price of a Waymo is about $11 more per trip than a Lyft and $9.50 more than an Uber.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in January that autonomous vehicles would take over the jobs of human Uber drivers within the next 10 to 20 years. Uber drivers made three billion trips in the first quarter of 2025, a 14% year-over-year growth in monthly active customers.

Related: Uber's CEO Says Drivers Have About 10 Years Left Before They Will Be Replaced

Nvidia mentioned in its latest financial results last month that revenue from its automotive division was $329 million, up 11% year-over-year due to its self-driving technology. Nvidia's Chief Financial Officer, Colette Kress, said in a conference call with analysts that Chinese EV maker Xiaomi built its SU7 sedan on Nvidia's self-driving platform.

Nvidia is one of the most valuable companies in the world at the time of writing, second only to Microsoft, with a market cap of over $3.5 trillion.