Nvidia-watchers had plenty to celebrate at CES this week, with news that the company’s latest GPU, Vera Rubin, is now fully in production. Those powerful AI chips—the picks and shovels of the AI boom—are, after all, what helped make Nvidia the world’s most valuable company.
But in his keynote address, CEO Jensen Huang once again made clear that Nvidia does not see itself as simply a chip company. It is also a software company, with its reach extending across nearly every layer of the AI stack—and with a major bet on physical AI: AI systems that operate in the real world, including robotics and self-driving cars.
In a press release touting Nvidia’s CES announcements, a quote attributed to Huang declared that “the ChatGPT moment for robotics is here.” Breakthroughs in physical AI—models that understand the real world, reason, and plan actions—“are unlocking entirely new applications,” he said.
In the keynote itself, however, Huang was more measured, saying the ChatGPT moment for physical AI is “nearly here.” It might sound like splitting hairs, but the distinction matters—especially given what Huang said at last year’s CES, when he introduced Nvidia’s Cosmos world platform and described robotics’ “ChatGPT moment” as merely “around the corner.”
