Nvidia Sees $50 Trillion AI Market, Builds Cloud in Germany

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, delivered a keynote at the Nvidia GTC Paris event, emphasizing the transformative potential of physical AI systems across various industries. According to Huang, Nvidia's AI solutions could unlock a $50 trillion market opportunity in factories, transportation, and humanoid robots. He noted that the company's automotive business is expected to reach $5 billion this year, with a trillion-dollar potential as cars shift toward full autonomy. However, only 1% of the vehicles on the road today are L2+ capable, indicating a substantial market to tap into. Nvidia announced that its full-stack Drive AV software, designed to enable advanced AI features in cars, is now in production. The software will debut in the Mercedes Benz CLA sedan, offering enhancements from infotainment dashboards to AI-driven driving. Additionally, the company is expanding its industrial AI footprint by partnering with Siemens and Deutsche Telekom to create an industrial AI cloud in Germany, which will feature 10,000 GPUs, including the Nvidia DGX B200 systems and RTX PRO servers. This initiative aims to accelerate manufacturing applications, such as design, engineering, simulation, digital twins, and robotics. Nvidia's safety system, Halo, has received recognition from leading certification bodies, and the company unveiled new AI tools and simulations to enhance autonomous driving and robotics. Among these tools are three new state-of-the-art Cosmos models designed to improve AV software performance under challenging conditions. The company also plans to release the Isaac Sim code as open source later this week, providing developers greater flexibility and control. Volvo is set to launch its new ES 90 sedan, equipped with Nvidia's Drive AV platform, in the coming months. Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) will follow suit next year with its next-generation fleet of cars. These partnerships have been years in the making and highlight the ongoing collaborative efforts between Nvidia and automotive manufacturers to advance autonomous vehicle technology. In addition to these automotive collaborations, Nvidia announced a significant partnership with Novo Nordisk to accelerate drug discovery through AI. The collaboration will leverage the Gefion sovereign AI supercomputer to drive innovative use cases in pharmaceuticals. Nvidia's expansion of the DGX Cloud Lepton platform, featuring a global compute marketplace, will connect developers working on agentic and physical AI applications. This move aligns with the company's goal to optimize large language models (LLMs) for enterprise use, particularly in Europe and the Middle East. The platform's enhanced capabilities, such as Neural Reconstruction for AV simulation, make it easier for developers to create and refine AI models. Rev Lebaredian, VP of Omniverse and Simulation Technology at Nvidia, underscored the growing demand for physical AI in factories and robotics, driven by a projected labor shortage of 50 million people in the next five years. Lebaredian emphasized that investing in physical AI is crucial for addressing this challenge and advancing the "factory of the future" concept. Germany is taking a major step towards becoming an AI powerhouse by deploying tens of thousands of Nvidia GPUs to power AI factories. These factories will support the development of sovereign AI applications for both public and private sectors, particularly benefiting the Mittelstand, which comprises 99% of German enterprises and contributes significantly to the country's economic output. Nvidia is building the world’s first industrial AI cloud for European manufacturers in Germany. The cloud will feature 10,000 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs, including DGX B200 systems and RTX PRO servers, to accelerate various manufacturing applications. Following the Nvidia Omniverse Blueprint, this infrastructure will run CUDA-X libraries and support RTX and Omniverse-accelerated workloads. One notable German supercomputer under development is JUPITER, housed at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre. With approximately 24,000 Nvidia GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips and Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking, JUPITER will double the computing capacity of Europe’s most powerful publicly available supercomputer. It will facilitate the training of large language models, enhance climate and weather simulations, and support drug discovery research. Another supercomputer, Blue Lion, is being built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise for the Leibniz Supercomputing Center (LRZ). Expected to go live in 2026, Blue Lion will utilize the Nvidia Vera Rubin architecture to advance workflows in climate, physics, and machine learning. German enterprises and startups are embracing Nvidia's AI technologies to unlock new capabilities. For instance, DeepL, a leading language AI company, is deploying an Nvidia DGX SuperPOD to accelerate its translation processes, reducing the time needed to translate all internet content from 194 days to just over 18 days. Black Forest Labs, a generative AI startup, has integrated its FLUX.1 AI model suite with the Nvidia AI Blueprint, enhancing text-to-image generation. Robotics and automation companies, such as Agile Robots, idealworks, Neura Robotics, and SICK, are incorporating the Nvidia Isaac platform for training, simulation, and deployment of robots and sensing solutions. In the automotive sector, Mercedes-Benz is using Omniverse to create digital twins of its factories, while BMW Group and Continental are leveraging Nvidia technology for various applications. Schaeffler Group will use Omniverse to optimize robot-assisted manufacturing processes. The financial sector is also seeing AI advancements, with Finanz Informatik, the digitalization partner of the German Savings Banks Finance Group, developing an AI assistant to process banking data more efficiently. Other German companies adopting Nvidia AI include KION Group, Noxtua, and secunet Security Networks AG. Germany is committed to building a robust AI developer community through initiatives like appliedAI, which provides small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) access to state-of-the-art Nvidia infrastructure and strategic guidance. Academic partnerships, such as those with LRZ and Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, are equipping students and researchers with AI skills through numerous workshops and training programs. Nvidia is also setting up a research center in Germany as part of its AI Technology Center program, focusing on fields such as digital medicine, stable diffusion AI, and open-source robotics platforms. Systems integrators and enterprise software providers like SAP, Accenture, adesso, Deloitte, Materna, and T-Systems are integrating Nvidia's AI microservices to support the development and deployment of AI applications. Industry experts laud Nvidia's initiatives, noting that the company’s focus on physical AI and collaboration with diverse stakeholders positions it uniquely to accelerate AI adoption. The integration of AI into manufacturing, automotive, and other critical sectors could significantly enhance productivity and innovation. AppliedAI CEO Andreas Liebl highlighted the importance of enabling SMEs to adopt AI, emphasizing the role of collaborations in democratizing access to cutting-edge AI technology. As Germany ramps up its AI infrastructure, Nvidia's contributions are expected to play a pivotal role in the country's digital transformation, fostering a more sustainable and competitive economy.