In the coming years, many automobile companies are likely to be using Nvidia's (NVDA 2.94%) chips to power their self-driving cars. In this Backstage Pass clip from "The AI/ML Show" recorded on Jan. 12, Motley Fool contributors Trevor Jennewine, Jamie Louko, Jose Najarro, and Toby Bordelon discuss how Nvidia can be an investment in the broader use of autonomous driving technology.
Trevor Jennewine: Nvidia is a broader way to play this industry than investing in a single company like Tesla and they certainly have established themselves as a gold standard in AI. I really like the way you presented Nvidia's tech there.
Jamie Louko: I don't own Nvidia and I haven't looked into it in a long time. But Jose, the more I'm on with you, the more I just learn about how Nvidia is such a great pick-and-shovel play like Trevor said in so many industries. The same is definitely going with autonomous vehicles.
Jose Najarro: The important thing is for Nvidia right now, the autonomous market is so small in its overall revenue collection. But it could be a market that if autonomous driving does do well in the next few years, it can really inflate that revenue to some extent and with any of the other markets that it's in.
Trevor Jennewine: You probably know better than I do, Jose. I'm an Nvidia shareholder, but I want to say in the most recent quarter their autonomous or their automotive revenues is like in the $100 million range, something like that. If it takes off, I could see it being as big as their datacenter, their segment eventually.
Toby Bordelon: That's right, $100 million in revenue. There are a lot of companies that have less revenue than that. Total revenue. It's a nice little business for them and it could get bigger. I think one advantage, you think about risk when you invest. If you want to invest in the autonomous space, one thing Nvidia does for you is it takes away some of the execution risk on implementing the system and it takes away some of the risks of picking the winner or picking a winner. There's still some of that, because the company doesn't necessarily have to use Nvidia's chips in their technology, but odds are a lot of them will.
By investing in Nvidia, if company A succeeds sooner than company B. If they're both using Nvidia hardware, you don't have to make that pick. You can say, let me just invest in the underlying technology or at least some of it and just root for the industry to move forward. Then win that way. That's like you don't want to be investing in an automaker. I think if you're really excited about the space, you want to do that, but don't just look there. Look at companies like Nvidia, their present technology.
