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Nvidia CEO praises Tesla FSD while unveiling rival platform
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang described Tesla's Full Self-Driving system as "world-class" and cutting-edge during a CES 2026 Q&A session Tuesday, even as his company launched a competing autonomous driving platform that sent Tesla shares tumbling.
Huang's praise came a day after Nvidia revealed Alpamayo, an open-source AI model suite designed to help automakers speed up robotaxi deployment. The Monday announcement at the Las Vegas tech conference triggered a nearly 4 percent drop in Tesla stock Tuesday, while Nvidia shares edged higher.
"Tesla's FSD stack is completely world-class," Huang stated. "Not just in terms of miles driven, but the architecture, how they do training, data collection, curation, synthetic data generation, and all their simulation technologies."
Different approaches, shared goals
Huang emphasized Nvidia's approach fundamentally differs from Tesla's integrated model. Rather than building autonomous vehicles itself, Nvidia supplies complete tech solutions for other manufacturers to customize. Mercedes-Benz will deploy Alpamayo first, integrating it into the new CLA sedan launching in the U.S. market during Q1 2026.
"Nvidia doesn't make self-driving cars. We design the complete solution so others can," Huang explained. "Our system is truly ubiquitous because we're a technology platform provider. That's the main difference."
Tesla CEO Elon Musk downplayed the immediate competitive threat on X, stating automakers would need "several years" to evolve functional autonomy to levels safer than human drivers. He estimated Alpamayo might pressure Tesla in five to six years, "probably longer." "What they'll discover is it's easy to hit 99 percent and then extremely hard to solve the long-tail distribution cases," Musk wrote, referring to rare scenarios challenging autonomous systems.
Market debate heats up
The launch sparked investor and analyst debate over whether Nvidia's move validates Tesla's vision-based approach or threatens to commoditize the autonomous tech central to Tesla's trillion-dollar valuation.
Future Fund LLC CIO Gary Black argued "unsupervised autonomy is about to become table stakes for all automakers," predicting ride-hailing platforms will quickly commoditize the technology. Altimeter Capital partner Freda Duan called Nvidia's launch a potential "Android moment" for autonomy if successful, introducing uncertainty into market pricing of Tesla's autonomy premium.
Tesla holds a massive data advantage, with its FSD fleet logging nearly 7 billion miles, including 2.5 billion in urban environments per company tracking. Nvidia's Alpamayo launched with about 1,700 hours of driving data.
