The owners formed the first inspection society on the European continent. The organization eventually grew into TUV, a group of independent service companies that provide testing, certification, auditing, and advisory services.
On Jan. 6, 2025, Jensen Huang, CEO and co-founder of AI chipmaking leviathan Nvidia (NVDA) , stood on stage in Las Vegas and spoke about--among other things--the autonomous vehicle revolution.
Huang delivered the keynote address at the annual CES trade show and discussed topics such as advanced gaming, autonomous vehicles, robotics, and agentic AI.
Nvidia, the world's second-most valuable company behind Apple, announced that its autonomous vehicle platform, Nvidia A Drive AGX Hyperion, has passed industry safety assessments by TUV SUD and TUV Rheinland.
The achievement, Nvidia said, “raises the bar for AV safety, innovation, and performance.”
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang kicked off CES 2025 in Las Vegas.Getty
Nvidia CEO says autonomous vehicle revolution has arrived
Available in the first half of this year, the latest iteration of Drive Hyperion - designed for both passenger and commercial vehicles - will feature the high-performance DRIVE AGX Thor SoC built on the Nvidia Blackwell architecture.
“A billion vehicles driving trillions of miles each year move the world,” Huang said. “With autonomous vehicles — one of the largest robotics markets — now here, the Nvidia Blackwell-powered platform will shift this revolution into high gear.”
He added that the next wave of autonomous machines will rely on physical AI world foundation models to understand and interact with the real world, "and Nvidia DRIVE is purpose-built for this new era, delivering unmatched functional safety and AI."
Toyota, self-driving technology company Aurora, and auto parts maker Continental have joined the list of Nvidia auto partners.
The world’s largest automaker will build its next-generation vehicles on Nvidia Drive AGX Orin running the safety-certified Nvidia DriveOS operating system.
Huang said, "The autonomous vehicle revolution has arrived, and automotive will be one of the largest AI and robotics industries.”
"Nvidia is bringing two decades of automotive computing, safety expertise, and its CUDA AV platform to transform the multi-trillion dollar auto industry," he said.
Aurora, Continental, and Nvidia also announced a long-term strategic partnership to deploy driverless trucks powered by Nvidia Drive at scale.
Nvidia’s accelerated compute running DriveOS will be integrated into the Aurora Driver, an SAE level 4 autonomous-driving system that Continental plans to mass-manufacture in 2027.
During his address, Huang also introduced what the company called its Cosmos foundation models.
These models generate photo-realistic video that can be used to train robots and self-driving cars at a much lower cost than using conventional data, according to Reuters.
By creating so-called "synthetic" training data, the models help robots and cars understand the physical world, just as large language models have helped chatbots generate responses in natural language.
Huang also unveiled new gaming chips—the RTX 50 series—intended to give video games movie-like graphics, especially in a field known as “shaders. "
Shaders can help images like ceramic teapots look more realistic by adding imperfections and fingerprint smudges to their surface.
The new chips can also help game developers generate more accurate human faces, an area where players are apt to notice even slightly unrealistic features.
Huang said Micron (MU) would specifically provide its high-bandwidth memory chips, a crucial component in artificial intelligence technologies, to Nvidia's new GeForce RTX 50 Blackwell family of gaming chips.
Portfolio manager says Nvidia CEO delivered the goods
TheStreet Pro's Chris Versace was clearly impressed by Huang's presentation.
"We expected Nvidia’s Jensen Huang to deliver the goods during his CES 2025 keynote last night, and he sure did," the veteran portfolio manager said.
"Huang offered a vision for how AI will spread through the economy and made several announcements, including working with Toyota and Uber (UBER) on autonomous driving solutions, Nvidia Cosmos, and a new desktop PC called Project Digits," he added.
Versace said that Huang's comments and record December quarter revenue from Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group, boosted Nvidia shares and those for Marvell Technology (MRVL) , pushing them each past 4.5% of the Portfolio’s assets.
"Reflecting on Huang’s outlook as well as other findings that show companies and other entities are ramping IT spending on AI, we are still in the relatively early innings for AI adoption," he said.
"That realization means we will remain owners of NVDA and MRVL shares to benefit from the eventual capacity crunch as AI adoption proliferates across a wider array of connected devices," Versace added.
Versace said he would revisit his price targets for Nvidia and Marvell once he sees Taiwan Semiconductor’s (TSM) December revenue report.
"To us, that is the fourth leg of this week’s AI stool, with the other three being Jensen’s keynote, Hon Hai’s December quarter news and CES 2025 announcements," he noted.
Bank of America Securities analysts led by Vivek Arya maintained their buy rating and $190 price on Nvidia, which was the Dow's top performer in 2024.
"Nvidia continues to expand its well-optimized and targeted lineup of AI services for enterprise customers," BofA analysts said. "Particularly, its new Cosmos model platform enables a faster development/deployment of physical AI (image/video recognition) for AV and robotics industries."
Ayra cited Nvidia’s “continued AI dominance across hardware/software, expanding reach from cloud to enterprise/consumer.”
CES, formerly the Consumer Electronics Show, runs Jan. 7-10.
More than 138,000 attendees attended last year's event, and organizers expect to see at least that number again for this year’s show.
Over 4,500 exhibitors, including 1,400 startups, are also anticipated across 2.5 million net square feet of floor space this week.
