Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang knows a thing or two about spotting the next big wave. Back in the 2010s, when his company was still best-known for gaming hardware, he began steering it toward breakthroughs in A.I.—a gamble that transformed Nvidia into the world’s most valuable public company. Now, Huang has his sights set squarely on robotics.
Yesterday (Aug. 25) Nvidia unveiled Jetson Thor, a $3,499 developer kit it describes as the “brains” of robotic systems. The robotics computers are designed to accelerate applications across industries ranging from manufacturing and logistics to health care and retail.
Powered by Nvidia’s Blackwell GPU, Jetson Thor boasts 128GB of memory and delivers 7.5 times the A.I. compute of its predecessor, Jetson Orin, with 3.5 times greater energy efficiency. Early adopters include Meta, Amazon Robotics, Boston Dynamics and Caterpillar, while companies like OpenAI and John Deere are testing how Jetson Thor could enhance their robotics efforts.
Huang has recently become more outspoken about his belief that physical forms of A.I., such as humanoid robots and self-driving cars, will drive the technology’s next phase. With tools like Cosmos Reason, a vision-language-action (VLA) model designed to give robots human-like reasoning skills, he is positioning Nvidia as a key force in that transition.
For now, robotics represents only a sliver of Nvidia’s business. Between February and April, the company’s automotive and robotics division generated $567 million in revenue—about 1 percent of total sales—but still marked a 72 percent year-over-year jump. Company-wide revenue for the quarter reached $39.3 billion, driven largely by its booming data center business.
Nvidia hopes Jetson Thor can help robotics grow into something far bigger. At Amazon Robotics, the kit is being used to scale next-gen robots capable of moving safely in real-world environments. At Caterpillar, Jetson Thor is powering autonomous machines that can make real-time decisions and improve precision in construction and mining.
Boston Dynamics is integrating Jetson Thor into its humanoid robot Atlas, while Agility Robotics is using the kit in the fifth generation of its Digit robot and plans to do the same for its sixth, aiming to boost perception and decision-making capabilities.
Academics are also exploring the kit’s potential. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute report that Jetson Thor enables robots to handle tasks such as medical triage and search-and-rescue in complex environments.
The product, Huang said in a statement, was designed for the “millions of developers” working to bring physical A.I. into the real world. “With unmatched performance and energy efficiency and the ability to run multiple generative A.I. models at the edge, Jetson Thor is the ultimate supercomputer to drive the age of physical A.I. and general robotics,” he said.
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