Nvidia eyes Robotics as its next biggest opportunity after AI

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says the next big thing after artificial intelligence is already in the works, and it’s robots. Speaking at Nvidia’s annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday, Huang emphasized that robotics, alongside AI, represents one of the company’s largest future growth opportunities, potentially worth trillions of dollars. He pointed to self-driving cars as the first commercial use case that’s already gaining traction.

“We have many growth opportunities across our company, with AI and robotics the two largest, representing a multi-trillion-dollar growth opportunity,” Huang said in response to a shareholder question.

The statement comes at a time when Nvidia is experiencing unprecedented momentum. The chipmaker’s total annual revenue jumped from $27 billion in 2023 to $130.5 billion last year, fueled by surging demand for its data center GPUs used in training large AI models like ChatGPT. Analysts expect nearly $200 billion in sales for fiscal 2025.

That explosive growth has propelled Nvidia’s market capitalization to $3.75 trillion, making it the most valuable company in the world, narrowly surpassing Microsoft.

Robotics: small today, massive tomorrow

Nvidia consolidated its robotics and automotive efforts into one business unit last year. And although the two currently represent just 1% of the company’s revenue ($567 million in quarterly sales), they’re growing fast. Up 72% year-over-year.

Huang said the segment’s importance lies not just in current sales, but in future-scale potential, where robotic factories, humanoid robots, and autonomous vehicles could number in the billions.

“We’re working towards a day where there will be billions of robots, hundreds of millions of autonomous vehicles, and hundreds of thousands of robotic factories that can be powered by Nvidia technology,” Huang said.

He highlighted Nvidia’s Drive platform, which Mercedes-Benz is using to power its autonomous systems, and pointed to the recent debut of Nvidia’s AI models for humanoid robots, dubbed Cosmos.

More than a chipmaker

Huang was clear that Nvidia’s identity is evolving. “We stopped thinking of ourselves as a chip company long ago,” he told shareholders, describing Nvidia instead as an “AI infrastructure” and “computing platform” provider.

The company now offers software, cloud services, and networking chips alongside its GPU accelerators, enabling customers to build and run AI applications from end to end.