2 Critical Factors Driving Nvidia's Success in Autonomous Driving

Nvidia (NVDA 3.65%) is getting stellar reviews from its workforce as it develops cutting-edge new projects in autonomous driving. In this Backstage Pass clip from "The AI/ML Show" recorded on Jan. 5, Motley Fool contributors Jose Najarro, Toby Bordelon, and Danny Vena explain why this special combination of talent and innovation sets Nvidia apart. 

Jose Najarro: One thing I do enjoy looking is just how, what type of engineers and careers or people they're always looking for, and right now they're really focusing on just that autonomous driving market, especially around my area where I'm at, and I like to see that. The overall engineers that work there always seem to be happy. Again, that's a positive note when talent seems to be happy, happy talent makes great products. Overall, Danny did a great job explaining how this is one that it's pretty much the pick of this goldmine rush that's happening in the AI world.

Toby Bordelon: That's key, which you mentioned with the talent being happy, because if I'm some other company that wants to come and compete in this space, I got to hire some engineers. I got to hire some talent, and I probably have to convince them either to leave Nvidia or not build there, if they're at a top of the field, so to the extent that Nvidia can keep that reputation of this is a place you want to be, this is the place you want to come, come bring your talent in Nvidia and help us build the metaverse, help us build self-driving. That's a competitive advantage, it really is. Sometimes people look at the focus on culture and say does that really matter? Well it does, especially if you're talking about a field where so much of your success depends on hiring the best people. They're only going to come there, it's a place they want to be it's a place good to work. That is a strong competitive advantage.

Danny Vena: Just to give that a little bit of context, I just quickly pulled up Glassdoor, and 98 percent of employee reviews approve of the CEO, 95 percent would recommend the job to a friend, and the company got 4.6 out of a possible five stars, across the board stellar reviews on Glassdoor.

Jose Najarro: I took a look at their CES presentation that they did, I believe it was yesterday. There was just one slide that really caught my attention. One thing the CEO mentioned in the last earnings was that chips don't move the markets or I'm paraphrasing, but he's pretty much, semiconductors don't move the market, it's the software that gives a service to the semiconductors, and the software that's what really creates the market.

Nvidia is really focusing on giving a purpose to their chips, and one of the biggest things that they talked about in CES was autonomous driving. They talked about how, let's say most vehicle companies right now are working on level 2 autonomous. Level 2 is when you still have to be physically in the car and you still have to have your hands in the vehicle. It's not fully autonomy, it's more just like driving assistance. If you have a whole fleet of cars with level 2 autonomous, and I forget how many cars are in the level 2. You need to have a server with like 1,000 or 1,500 graphics cards to make sure you're working that data at a fast pace.

But now moving into like level 4 or level 5 where that's fully autonomous from 1,500 graphics cards that are needed in level 2 for a fleet that's working in level 4 or level 5 autonomous, you will need a server or over 25,000 graphics cards. Again, they have the software solutions for autonomous driving with the products that they have. They have the hardware solutions and then they also have the graphics cards to power that. I think that's a pretty cool market that might expand dramatically in the next few years.