An AI model from over a decade ago sparked Nvidia's investment in autonomous vehicles

Core Insights - Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang highlighted the company's commitment to autonomous vehicles during his keynote at GTC 2025, linking it to the historical impact of AlexNet on deep learning and computer vision [1][3][4] Automotive Industry Impact - The introduction of AlexNet in 2012, which achieved 84.7% accuracy in the ImageNET competition, inspired Nvidia to invest heavily in self-driving technology, marking over a decade of development in this area [2][3][4] - Nvidia has established partnerships with various automakers and tech companies, including a recent expanded collaboration with GM, to enhance the development of autonomous vehicles [4] - Major automotive companies such as Tesla, Wayve, and Waymo utilize Nvidia GPUs for their data centers, while others leverage Nvidia's Omniverse for creating digital twins of factories [5] Technology Utilization - Nvidia's Drive Orin system-on-chip, based on the Ampere architecture, is employed by companies like Mercedes, Volvo, and Toyota for their automated driving systems [5] - The safety-focused operating system, DriveOS, is also being adopted by Toyota and other manufacturers, further embedding Nvidia's technology in the automotive sector [5][6]