Nvidia launched Alpamayo 2 Super, an open-license reasoning model for self-driving cars and robotaxis, on August 4, positioning autonomous vehicles as a major growth opportunity.
The model outperformed rivals Gemini 2.5 Pro and GPT-4o on driving benchmarks and lets automakers build proprietary products without per-task licensing fees.
Despite 71% trailing 12-month revenue growth and a 92% surge in data center revenue, Nvidia's stock has stalled after recent earnings beats, signaling market skepticism about near-term valuation at a $5 trillion market cap.
What happened
On August 4, Nvidia opened commercial use of Alpamayo 2 Super, a reasoning model for self-driving cars and robotaxis, available under an open license (OpenMDW 1.1) that lets automakers and suppliers build proprietary products without paying Nvidia per task. The model family has topped 500,000 downloads on Hugging Face and outperformed Gemini 2.5 Pro by 15.1 points and GPT-4o by 23.2 points on the LingoQA driving benchmark.
Why it matters
Nvidia's trailing 12-month revenue climbed 71% to $253 billion, with data center revenue (which autonomous-vehicle compute depends on) rising 92% year over year to $75.2 billion. The move signals the company's bet on robotaxis as a next-growth engine, even as the stock has fallen or barely moved after several recent earnings beats, suggesting investor skepticism about sustaining gains at a $5 trillion market capitalization.
What to watch
Nvidia reports fiscal second-quarter results on August 26. The company also raised its quarterly dividend from a penny to $0.25 a share and authorized an $80 billion buyback, signaling confidence in cash generation despite stock-market caution.
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Nvidia's August 4 launch of Alpamayo 2 Super reflects a deliberate strategic pivot toward autonomous vehicles as the next frontier for growth. Rather than licensing a proprietary frontier model at premium prices, the company is offering an open-source foundation that developers can build on without per-task fees—a model designed to drive adoption across the automotive supply chain while locking in Nvidia's data center infrastructure as the compute layer beneath those stacks. This positioning arrives as Nvidia's core business accelerates: trailing 12-month revenue climbed 71% to $253 billion, with data center revenue (the segment autonomous-vehicle compute depends on) growing 92% year over year to $75.2 billion.
However, investor enthusiasm has not matched the growth rate. Nvidia's stock has stalled after recent earnings beats, a sign the market may be pricing in the difficulty of maintaining such returns at a $5 trillion valuation—a size roughly equal to a sixth of annual US economic output. The company's signal of confidence in its cash position (a dividend increase to $0.25 a share and an $80 billion buyback authorization) underscores management's belief in durability, but the stock's tepid reception suggests investors are waiting for proof that robotaxi adoption can sustain the growth trajectory that has driven Nvidia's rise. The August 26 earnings call will be a key test of whether the market's skepticism reflects realistic concern or temporary caution.
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