CEO Jensen Huang Delivers Keynote Address During Nvidia's GTC Conference

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang during his keynote at Nvidia’s GTC event in March 2026 (Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images)

Nvidia pushes further into the autonomous vehicle space to compete with Tesla and Waymo

The tech giant is partnering with Uber and Lyft, sending their stocks higher.

3/17/26 9:38AM

On Monday, Nvidia announced that it was expanding its partnerships with both Uber and Lyft, positioning itself as the technical backbone for future robotaxi fleets as it pushes deeper into the autonomous vehicle market.

Nvidia’s chips have long been widely used in autonomous driving systems, but the company is increasingly building out a full hardware and software platform for self-driving vehicles. Its technology, including its Alpamayo autonomous driving AI models and its DRIVE Hyperion AV platform, is helping enable a growing web of companies to compete with the likes of Tesla and Alphabet’s Waymo, the two leaders in the US robotaxi space.

Shares of Uber and Lyft both rose on the news. Tesla stock was flat.

As Waymo and Amazon’s Zoox expand their robotaxi programs, they are breaking from Tesla’s all-in-one approach as the industry shifts toward a more modular ecosystem — one Nvidia helps power — where companies specialize in different parts of the business. “Nvidia, as you know, is a platform company,” CEO Jensen Huang said at the company’s GTC event yesterday. “We have technology. We have our platforms. We have a rich ecosystem.”

Waymo is currently the furthest along, with its driverless car service available to the public in 10 US cities. Tesla, meanwhile, is hoping to deploy its robotaxi service, which still mostly involves a human in the front seat, to another half dozen markets in addition to Austin and the Bay Area in the first half of this year.

While Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently said Nvidia’s tech wouldn’t apply “competitive pressure” on Tesla for at least five years, the timelines for Nvidia’s latest partnerships seem like that could come much sooner.

Uber expects Nvidia-powered Level 4 robotaxis to launch on its platform in Los Angeles and San Francisco in 2027, and hopes to scale to 28 cities globally by 2028. Meanwhile, Zoox, which has relied on Nvidia’s tech for its purpose-built autonomous vehicles since 2017, is currently testing in 10 markets, and planning to deploy more broadly through Uber’s platform.

Rani Molla5h

Meta pushes deeper into AI robots with acquisition

Meta just bought robotics AI startup Assured Robot Intelligence, Bloomberg reports, doubling down on its push into humanoid tech. The team will join Meta’s Superintelligence Labs to build models that let robots “understand, predict and adapt to human behaviors in complex environments.”

The goal, Bloomberg says, is to be the Android of robots: building the software and hardware foundation others can use.

The move comes right after China forced Meta to let go of its acquisition of agentic AI startup Manus.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg joins Tesla’s Elon Musk and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in racing into AI-powered robots.

Meta Acquires Robotics AI Company to Help Build Humanoid Technology

CEO Mark Zuckerberg joins Tesla’s Elon Musk and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in racing into AI-powered robots.

Rani Molla7h

Apple’s capital spending is heading the opposite direction of Big Tech

The big story in Big Tech has been just how much they’re spending on capex to furnish their AI futures. Not only are Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft spending more than ever, they’re also spending more than they said they would just a quarter earlier. In total, their 2026 capital expenditure bill is now slated to surge beyond $700 billion.

Apple, by contrast, continues to take a different approach. The company has lagged peers in developing its own frontier AI models and has leaned more on partnerships. The strategy certainly doesn’t seem to be hurting Apple yet. The company posted record revenue in the March quarter that beat analysts’ expectations this week, even without a robust AI offering.

Apple’s capex actually fell in the March quarter. Its payments for acquisition of property, plant, and equipment totaled about $1.9 billion in its fiscal second quarter, down 36% from roughly $3 billion a year earlier. So on a year-over-year basis, Apple’s capex declined while everyone else’s jumped sharply.

Tesla’s related party transactions in 2025

Elon Musk’s companies more than doubled their spending on each other last year

And that’s before Tesla invested $2 billion in xAI, which it has since converted to a stake in SpaceX.

Rani Molla8h

Jon Keegan8h

Tim Cook: Popular Mac mini and Mac Studio will be constrained for “several months”

Apple may have missed out on the first wave of generative AI when it comes to software, but its hardware is another story.

The current OpenClaw craze — where users run their own AI agents on a dedicated computer in their homes, and chat with it via messaging apps — has made the once sleepy Mac mini and pro-level Mac Studio an unlikely hit.

Reports of shortages are not lost on Apple.

During this week’s earnings call, outgoing CEO Tim Cook acknowledged the supply constraint of the popular desktops:

“On the Mac mini and the Mac Studio, both of these are amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools, and the customer recognition of that is happening faster than what we had predicted. And so we saw higher-than-expected demand.”

Cook noted that the Mac mini was the top-selling desktop computer in China last quarter, where the DIY agentic AI boom is especially popular. In addition to strong customer demand, Cook cited supply chain constraints adding to the problem, which “may take several months to reach supply/demand balance.”

The Mac mini is one of the products that Apple will be making in the US starting later this year.

Apple Says Mac Studio and Mac Mini Will Be in Short Supply for Months

Reports of shortages are not lost on Apple.

During this week’s earnings call, outgoing CEO Tim Cook acknowledged the supply constraint of the popular desktops:

“On the Mac mini and the Mac Studio, both of these are amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools, and the customer recognition of that is happening faster than what we had predicted. And so we saw higher-than-expected demand.”

The Mac mini is one of the products that Apple will be making in the US starting later this year.

Rani Molla11h

Apple’s iPhone is the top-selling smartphone in urban China

Apple’s second-quarter earnings beat expectations and underscore its growing strength in China, where it is closing in on the top spot in the smartphone market.

“We are thrilled with the performance in Greater China,” CEO Tim Cook said, noting that the iPhone was “the top-selling model in urban China.” Cook first called the iPhone the rather than a top-selling model there during the company’s first-quarter earnings earlier this year.

Data from IDC and Counterpoint Research shows Apple accounted for 19% of smartphone shipments in China in the first calendar quarter of 2026, just behind Huawei at 20%. Analysts say Apple is poised to take the lead soon, helped in part by rising memory chip costs, which are pushing up competitors’ prices.

Apple’s China revenue rose 28% in the March quarter, ahead of analyst estimates, and is up 33% in the first half of the year.

Apple is on its way to becoming the biggest smartphone seller in China