NVIDIA Unveils 'Alpamayo' Reasoning AI for Autonomous Vehicles at CES 2026
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang took the stage at CES 2026 in Las Vegas on Monday, focusing on existing technologies while announcing several key advancements.
The standout reveal was the Alpamayo open-source reasoning AI model series, designed specifically to help autonomous vehicles navigate complex, unpredictable situations.
Alpamayo-1, the flagship model with 10 billion parameters, uses a "chain-of-thought" system. It breaks down unexpected scenarios into smaller problems, selects the safest path, and explains its reasoning — mimicking human judgment while driving.
Huang said: “Our goal is that one day every car and every truck will be fully autonomous.”
NVIDIA also introduced Alpasim, a companion model that creates rare, challenging simulated environments for training autonomous systems.
The first real-world deployment will be in the 2025 Mercedes-Benz CLA, integrating Alpamayo and NVIDIA's full autonomous driving stack.
Huang emphasized that Alpamayo enables cars to reason like humans in difficult situations.
Vera Rubin Supercomputer Platform
Huang also highlighted the Vera Rubin platform, first teased in 2024. The system pairs:
- Vera CPU: 88 custom Olympus cores, 1.5TB system memory, 227 billion transistors
- Rubin GPU: 336 billion transistors
Each Vera Rubin supercomputer will combine one CPU and one GPU, targeting massive AI workloads.
Other Highlights
- No major consumer GPU (graphics card) announcements were made during the keynote, though more details may emerge during the ongoing CES (running until 9 January).
- The event featured two BD-1 robots from Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, returning from last year's CES alongside Huang.
