Uber and Volkswagen team up with artificial intelligence firm in race to develop self-driving cars

Nvidia will partner with Uber and Volkswagen as the graphics chipmaker's artificial intelligence platforms make further gains in the autonomous vehicle industry. The company, which already has partnerships in the industry with companies such as carmaker Tesla and China's Baidu, makes computer graphics chips and has also been expanding into technology for self-driving cars. CEO Jensen Huang told an audience at the CES technology conference in Las Vegas that Uber's self-driving car fleet was using Nvidia technology to help its autonomous cars perceive the world and make split-second decisions. Uber has been using Nvidia's GPU computing technology since its first test fleet of Volvo SC90 SUVS were deployed in 2016 in Pittsburgh and Phoenix. Uber's autonomous driving programme has been shaken this year by a lawsuit filed in San Francisco by rival Waymo alleging trade secret theft.