NVIDIA and Uber have announced a major expansion of their autonomous vehicle partnership, which includes a plan to bring their Level 4 (L4) robotaxi service to 28 cities by 2028. The deployment of this service is expected to begin in Los Angeles and San Francisco in 2027. The service will use NVIDIA’s DRIVE Hyperion platform and its Alpamayo AI model. The autonomous driving platform is capable of handling complex driving scenarios such as roadwork and unpredictable pedestrian movements. This is a major step toward fully autonomous urban mobility.
The deployment of the robotaxi service will be a phased one, beginning with data collection and supervised operation before moving on to fully autonomous operation. The goal of this, as stated by Dara Khosrowshahi, is to enhance safety, dependability, and accessibility while also paving the way for the large-scale commercialisation of autonomous transport. The announcement was also seen as a major milestone by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, as it signalled a “breakthrough in physical AI,” indicating the capability of robots to operate in a complex environment. The expansion of this service is planned to include North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, making both companies leaders in a rapidly heating global robotaxi competition.