Short answer: Sam Nadler says Nvidia is entering autonomous driving with Alpamayo, partnering with Mercedes. Jordan Metzner says this makes Nvidia both Tesla's chip vendor and its competition, building software so customers buy more chips.
Watch this answer from Episode 26 (starts at 21:03) · Episode 26 notes and transcript
From Episode 26: We Built an AI Trading Bot for Prediction Markets — Here’s What Actually Happened, starting at 21:03.
Sam Nadler [21:02]: Cool. Alright. We got some hot news. We're gonna start overall with NVIDIA and their entrance into the autonomous vehicle space with the launch of, I don't know if I'm pronouncing this correctly, Alpamayo. So it's, I think it's direct competition to Tesla's self driving. My understanding is they're partnering with Mercedes. And within, this year, they're gonna have their NVIDIA chips inside the Mercedes vehicle. Was it the e class or the c class? I can't for can't remember. And, yeah, I think it's a really interesting opportunity for NVIDIA. Obviously, it's a long road to master autonomous driving, and Tesla's been at it for, longer than a decade, I think, it feels. But what are your thoughts on the strategy and their entrance into the market?
Jordan Metzner [21:57]: Yeah. So, I mean, obviously, this is pretty crazy news, at least from, like, outside perspective, not knowing what Elon and Jensen have been talking about. But, one, obviously, I'm a huge Tesla fan, as you know, and I have a Tesla and full self driving at least since fourteen point two has been really, really incredible user experience. I think this puts NVIDIA at a position where not only are they Tesla's vendor for, the chips inside the vehicles, but they're also now Tesla's competition. And I also think it what's kind of interesting is that, NVIDIA knew that if they wanted to sell more chips inside of vehicles, that they were gonna be the ones that were needed to do the development. And that is actually kind of a new and interesting thing because, historically, Tesla's been buying these chips from NVIDIA and building their own full self driving stack. And I think, if you would have asked me before this announcement who's Tesla's competition in full self driving, we probably would have named other auto manufacturers that are trying to build self driving vehicles. And I think we probably would not have said that NVIDIA, who is a vendor of Tesla, is going to be Tesla's competition here. And so I think, like, that's probably the biggest change, which is, like, in areas in which NVIDIA believes that they're the consumer of these chips is not able to fabricate the technology in which the chips are being used, that they have gone ahead and gone and developed software simply just so that their customers can buy more chips from them. And I think that is like super interesting.
Jordan Metzner [23:18]: Now the flip side of that is kind of what Elon has said publicly about this, which is, they've gotten maybe 99% of the way there, but, Tesla truly believes that like the last, 1% is a very, very long tail, and it'll be very difficult for these manufacturers to get there. Now what does this mean for NVIDIA? What does this mean for Tesla? It's really hard to say. I think we all know that NVIDIA is sitting on a ton of cash. Does NVIDIA go buy an auto manufacturer and become Tesla's competitor? Does NVIDIA become the provider of first source to many auto manufacturers of full self driving? I think I'd mentioned this to you a few weeks back, but, with the latest Tesla update, I was truly and I still do believe that Tesla will sell their full self driving vehicle technology to other auto manufacturers. It seems so obvious. But it's if that's the case, now they're they're gonna compete against NVIDIA, which, might be willing to give it the software for free if they buy a certain chip.
Jordan Metzner [24:10]: Right? And so that actually might have some, impact on market dynamics, etcetera. But I also think, like, at the end of the day, a lot of people do do not understand and have not experienced the quality of Tesla's full self driving in its latest iteration. And I think that when people feel it, when people experience it, and like you mentioned just a few weeks ago, Sam, when you had that first Waymo, I told you that they were driverless. You knew they've been driverless. You knew that. Right? But once you're in the car and you're driving and you feel the turns and you feel the experience, everything just kinda changes, you know? And I think the same is true for the Tesla self driving. We haven't seen large populations of people who don't have Teslas, like, experience it, use it, feel it. Tesla's Robo Taxi is coming out to market now, but, you always tell me about how, your dad hates driving. He never likes to drive long distances. He never likes to drive at night. Well, know, what happens if he has a Tesla and he's full self driving all the time? How much better does that make his quality of life?
Jordan Metzner [25:06]: Or maybe he's just willing to use it at nighttime so that he you know, he's he's willing to maybe go out to dinner when previously he wouldn't. So obviously, this is a new day, and a lot of things are happening. I can't wait until I can like actually just like, completely ignore my steering wheel and gas and brake and just, kinda be on my laptop while I'm inside the car.
Sam Nadler [25:25]: Or take a quick nap.
Jordan Metzner [25:26]: And hopefully, we're not that far away. Yeah. Maybe even take a nap. Exactly. Yeah. Watch a movie. Watch it. You know? Do whatever. So
Sam Nadler [25:32]: Oh, yeah. That LA traffic always on me is a benefit.
Jordan Metzner [25:35]: Yeah. I don't think anybody likes waiting when they don't need to. But, yeah, if you're in traffic and you can watch a movie and you fall asleep or, get some work done. Right? So, yeah, obviously, huge opportunity here. Let's just jump right into the next NVIDIA story because I think it's also incredibly interesting.
