Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang speaks during Nvidia Live at CES 2026 (Patrick T. Fallon/Getty Images)

Nvidia’s autonomous tech gives other automakers a chance to take on Tesla

Nvidia made a number of autonomous vehicle announcements at CES yesterday that should have Tesla worried.

1/6/26 9:00AM

Updated 1/6/26 1:54PM

Tesla is known for being an island. While most other carmakers and robotaxi services rely on an intricate web of hardware and software partnerships, Tesla does nearly everything in-house, from vehicle construction to the AI that powers its Full Self-Driving technology.

Enter Nvidia, whose autonomous driving software and hardware announcements yesterday underscore how Tesla’s once inaccessible approach to autonomy is becoming something other automakers can buy.

Presenting at the CES conference in Las Vegas yesterday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveiled Alpamayo, an open “reasoning” AI model family designed specifically for autonomous driving. The Alpamayo family of tools will introduce “chain-of-thought” models that can assess “novel or rare scenarios step by step.” In the press release accompanying the announcement, Huang said that the “ChatGPT moment for physical AI is here” and that he expects robotaxis to be among the first to benefit. Nvidia confirmed that Mercedes-Benz will begin shipping cars with the technology this year, offering advanced driver-assistance features comparable to Tesla’s FSD. (Mercedes’ former parent, Daimler, once held a 10% equity stake in Tesla.)

The AI chip designer also announced that it’s expanding its DRIVE Hyperion autonomous vehicle platform, bringing in a wide range of auto suppliers and sensor makers as it pushes the system as a ready-to-use foundation for self-driving cars and robotaxis. The platform bundles Nvidia’s latest Thor chips with cameras, radar, and lidar, centralized vehicle controls, and safety, simulation, and AI training tools — effectively packaging many of the pieces Tesla has built in-house into a system other automakers can use.

Taken together, the announcements show Nvidia turning autonomy into a platform business — one that could erode Tesla’s long-standing advantage by allowing rivals to buy the hardware, software, and safety infrastructure Tesla built for itself.

“I’m not losing any sleep about this,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has had a notably chummy relationship with Huang, posted last night — one of several about the Nvidia announcements. “And I genuinely hope they succeed.”

I’m not losing any sleep about this.

And I genuinely hope they succeed.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 6, 2026

In another comment, Musk noted that there’s a years-long interval between when autonomous tech “sort of works to where it is much safer than a human,” suggesting that Tesla is way ahead of any would-be competitors. Indeed, Musk added, “This is maybe a competitive pressure on Tesla in 5 or 6 years, but probably longer.”

Tesla is down about more than 4% today, while Nvidia, up slightly earlier today, is flat. Aeva, a 4D lidar company Nvidia announced a partnership with, soared as high as 37%.

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What started as a 10-hour human-versus-robot challenge turned into a continuous marathon shift spanning nine days of continuous work.

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Report: Uber considers full Delivery Hero takeover to take on DoorDash outside the US

Uber appears to be considering upping its competition with DoorDash outside the US, exploring a potential full takeover of Frankfurt-listed Delivery Hero, Bloomberg reports. Earlier this week the US-based ride-hailing service disclosed a 19.5% stake in the food delivery company, but now that could go higher.

The $11.8 billion German company could be particularly vulnerable to a takeover right now, with its CEO having recently stepped down following pressure from activist investors to sell off assets. A full acquisition would give Uber a massive foothold in over 60 countries to combat DoorDash’s European-focused Wolt unit.

Uber has been involved in a lot of deal-making of late, mostly in the autonomous vehicle space, where it now has more than 30 partnerships globally.

Uber extended its losses on the news and is currently down around 1.7%.

Uber Said to Study Full Takeover of European Rival Delivery Hero

Uber has been involved in a lot of deal-making of late, mostly in the autonomous vehicle space, where it now has more than 30 partnerships globally.

Uber extended its losses on the news and is currently down around 1.7%.

Rani Molla5/22/26

Meta released a Reddit dupe. Reddit investors don’t like it.

Fresh on the heels of releasing a Snapchat dupe, which sent Snap down earlier this month, Meta seems to be meddling with Reddit, quietly releasing a Reddit-like Facebook app called Forum yesterday. After news of the “dedicated space built for deeper discussions, real answers and the communities you care about,” Reddit’s stock is down 4.5% today.

Last month, Reddit’s earnings report handily beat analysts’ expectations, but it continues to struggle with the perception that bigger tech companies — including Meta — investing heavily in AI will eat its lunch. The stock is down nearly 40% year-to-date.

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Report: OpenAI’s Q1 revenue was $5.7 billion, beating Anthropic

The neck-and-neck race between OpenAI and Anthropic as the AI companies barrel toward their expected IPOs this year is shaking out some internal numbers for would-be investors to ponder.

The Information is reporting that OpenAI’s first-quarter revenue was ~$5.7 billion, about $1 billion ahead of Anthropic’s revenue for the same period.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Anthropic is on course to more than double its first-quarter revenue of $4.8 billion to $10.9 billion in the second quarter. It is not known what OpenAI is projecting for Q2.

Recently, The New York Times reported that Anthropic’s current fundraising round seeking to raise between $30 billion and $50 billion comes with a valuation of up to $950 billion, putting it ahead of OpenAI’s latest reported valuation of $850 billion.

OpenAI Held $1 Billion Revenue Lead Over Anthropic in First Quarter

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Alphabet’s Waymos are still getting caught in floods after recall

Waymo, the self-driving subsidiary of Alphabet, has paused operations in Atlanta after a new report of a vehicle driving into a flooded roadway and getting stuck, TechCrunch reports. The news comes just weeks after the company recalled its fleet of nearly 4,000 driverless cars to deal with a previous flood incident in San Antonio, where the service is also paused.

After that incident, Waymo instituted an “interim remedy” to make the vehicles “exclude additional operating conditions that present an elevated risk of encountering a flooded, higherspeed roadway,” but added that it was still “developing the final remedy for this recall.”

As we’ve noted, Waymo has mostly kept its rollout — now public in 11 cities — to more temperate climates, as severe weather poses more challenges to autonomous vehicles.

Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods | TechCrunch