Joby soars after announcing partnership with Nvidia to develop autonomous flight capabilities

Joby Aviation is taking off in early trading after the electric air taxi company announced that it’s partnering with Nvidia to enhance its autonomous flight technology.

While Nvidia unveiled fresh partnerships with auto companies (Uber and Lucid) on Tuesday, Joby is the company’s “only aviation launch partner” for its new IGX Thor platform, which is designed to specialize in physical AI.

“NVIDIA’s support for industry recognized functional safety standards on the IGX Thor platform allows Joby to pursue certifiable autonomy for near-term defense and long-term civil applications as the Federal Aviation Administration advances the capabilities of national airspace,” per the press release.

Joby said that integrating this technology will boost safety, outcomes, and performance by enabling autonomous mission management, radar and perception processing, as well as predictive system health monitoring, among other features.

“Autonomous cars have showcased the ability to interpret large volumes of data to make split-second decisions,” said Gregor Veble Mikić, flight research lead at Joby. “For an aircraft, the compute power needed for autonomy is similarly high, but also needs to meet even higher levels of design rigor to achieve certification for operation in controlled airspace.”

With Japan’s Hitachi Rail also among the early adopters of IGX Thor, we can safely say that Nvidia’s platform is making inroads on planes, trains, and AIutomobiles.