Nvidia's new 'robot brain' goes on sale for $3,499 as company targets robotics for growth

Nvidia announced Monday that its latest robotics spot module, the Jetson AGX Thor, is present connected merchantability for $3,499 arsenic a developer kit.

The institution calls the spot a "robot brain." The archetypal kits vessel adjacent month, Nvidia said past week, and the chips volition let customers to make robots.

After a institution uses the developer kit to prototype their robot, Nvidia volition merchantability Thor T5000 modules that tin beryllium installed successful production-ready robots. If a institution needs much than 1,000 Thor chips, Nvidia volition complaint $2,999 per module.

CEO Jensen Huang has said robotics is the company's largest maturation accidental outside of artificial intelligence, which has led to Nvidia's wide income much than tripling successful the past 2 years.

"We bash not physique robots, we bash not physique cars, but we alteration the full manufacture with our infrastructure computers and the associated software," said Deepu Talla, Nvidia's vice president of robotics and borderline AI, connected a telephone with reporters Friday.

The Jetson Thor chips are based connected a Blackwell graphics processor, which is Nvidia's existent procreation of exertion utilized successful its AI chips, arsenic good arsenic its chips for machine games.

Nvidia said that its Jetson Thor chips are 7.5 times faster than its erstwhile generation. That allows them to tally generative AI models, including ample connection models and ocular models that tin construe the satellite astir them, which is indispensable for humanoid robots, Nvidia said. The Jetson Thor chips are equipped with 128GB of memory, which is indispensable for large AI models.

Companies including Agility Robotics, Amazon, Meta and Boston Dynamics are utilizing its Jetson chips, Nvidia said. Nvidia has besides invested successful robotics companies specified arsenic Field AI.

However, robotics remains a tiny concern for Nvidia, accounting for astir 1% of the company's full revenue, contempt the information that it has launched respective caller robot chips since 2014. But it's increasing fast.

Nvidia precocious combined its concern units to radical its automotive and robotics divisions into the aforesaid enactment item. That portion reported $567 cardinal successful quarterly income successful May, which represented a 72% summation connected an yearly basis.

The institution said its Jetson Thor chips tin beryllium utilized for self-driving cars arsenic well, particularly from Chinese brands. Nvidia calls its car chips Drive AGX, and portion they are akin to its robotics chips, they tally an operating strategy called Drive OS that's been tuned for automotive purposes.