Nvidia launched new products, such as artificial intelligence to better train robots and cars, chips for improved video games, its first desktop computer, at an event on Monday that exposed its potential to expand business.
At the CES 2025 technology fair in Las Vegas, Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, explained how the second most valuable company in the world is bringing the technology that will be incorporated into its artificial intelligence chips to data processing centers and for PCs and notebooks.
The company also introduced what Nvidia calls Cosmos foundation models, which generate photorealistic videos that can be used to train robots and self-driving cars at a much lower cost than using conventional data.
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By creating so-called “synthetic” training data, models help robots and cars understand the physical world in a similar way to the way large language models have helped chatbots generate natural language responses.
Users will be able to provide Cosmos with a text description that can be used to generate videos of a world that obeys the laws of physics. This promises to be much cheaper than collecting data as it is currently done, such as putting cars on the road to collect videos or having humans teach robots repetitive tasks.
Cosmos will be made available under an “open license,” similar to the Meta Llama 3 language models that have become widely used in the technology sector.
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“We really hope (Cosmos) does for the world of robotics and industrial AI what Llama 3 did for enterprise AI,” Huang said.
Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya said it remains to be seen whether the robotics push will significantly increase Nvidia’s sales.
“The challenge, in our opinion, is (…) making products sufficiently reliable, cheap and widespread to generate reliable business models,” Arya said in a note to clients. “From this perspective, robotics could remain another interesting but niche opportunity, like metaverses or self-driving cars.”
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Huang also revealed new video game chips that use Nvidia’s ‘Blackwell’ AI technology, which has helped boost the company’s sales in data centers.
The new video game microprocessors, which Nvidia calls the RTX 50 series, aim to provide games with movie-like graphics, especially in a field known as ‘shaders’, which can help images like a ceramic teapot appear more realistic. , adding imperfections and fingerprint smudges to its surface.
The new chips could also help game developers generate more accurate human faces, an area where gamers are able to notice even unrealistic features. The price of the chips varies from US$549 to US$1,999, with the top-of-the-line models arriving on January 30 and the lower models in February.
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Ben Bajarin, president of technology consultancy Creative Strategies, said the new gaming chips should help boost Nvidia’s sales in the near term.
Huang also showed off his first desktop computer, called Project DIGITS – although it is a computer designed for programmers rather than everyday consumers.
Costing $3,000 and running a Linux-based Nvidia operating system, it will feature the same chip at the heart of the company’s data center offerings, but paired with a central processor created with help from Taiwan’s MediaTek.
The chips will come in a smaller package that can be used by individual software developers to quickly test their AI systems. The desktop will be available in March.
Nvidia also said Toyota will use its Orin chips and automotive operating system for the automaker’s advanced driver assistance system in several models. The company did not provide details about the models.
Huang expects automotive hardware and software revenue of $5 billion in fiscal 2026, up from $4 billion forecast for this year.
CES, formerly the Consumer Electronics Show, takes place from January 7th to 10th.
Nvidia shares closed at a record high of 149.43 on Monday, raising its market value to $3.66 trillion, making it the second most valuable publicly traded company in the world, behind only Apple.
