Nvidia launches its Jetson AGX Thor robotics chip developer kit

On Monday, Nvidia launched its newest robotics module, the Jetson AGX Thor, as a $3,499 developer kit. The chips are intended to let customers create robots.

The company describes the unit as a “robot brain.” Nvidia said last week that the first developer kits, meant for prototyping, will start shipping next month.

After finalizing its design, Nvidia plans to sell Thor T5000 production modules for production robots. For orders above 1,000 units, each Thor module will cost $2,999.

Robotics is the largest growth opportunity for Nvidia

CEO Jensen Huang has called robotics the company’s most significant expansion area outside AI, which has driven sales to more than triple in two years. 

Jetson Thor uses a Blackwell GPU, the current generation behind Nvidia’s AI chips and gaming hardware. Nvidia says Jetson Thor delivers 7.5 times the performance of its prior generation. That speed is meant to run generative AI, including LLMs and visual systems that read and respond to the world, which is essential for humanoid robots. The module includes 128GB of memory to handle large AI workloads.

The company says firms such as Agility Robotics, Boston Dynamics, Meta, and Amazon are using Jetson chips today. Nvidia also invested in robotics startups, including Field AI.

Even so, robotics is about 1% of revenue, though it is growing. Nvidia recently reorganized its reporting lines, grouping automotive and robotics together. That unit posted quarterly sales worth $567 million in May, up 72% from a year earlier.

According to Nvidia, Jetson Thor is also targeted at advanced driver-assistance and self-driving systems, particularly for Chinese automakers. The company’s automotive chips are sold as Drive AGX. They are similar to its robotics chips but use Drive OS, a vehicle-tuned operating system.

Nvidia continues to grow due to the AI transformation

The wave of generative AI that began two years ago has reshaped Nvidia’s business. Since then, revenue tripled and profits quadrupled. The fiscal second-quarter report due Wednesday will mark two years of rapid growth as Nvidia shifted from a gaming-chip maker to the center of the tech industry.

Last month, Nvidia reached a $4 trillion market value and became the first company with such a valuable market value, and shares have kept climbing. Since 2022, when ChatGPT was launched by OpenAI, resulting in the start of the current AI boom, Nvidia’s stock has risen twelvefold. The shares are up 33% this year and closed Friday at $177.99. The stock has kept growing since.

Expansion remains large for a company of Nvidia’s size, but the pace has cooled. After five quarters of growth in triple-digits through 2023 and 2024, year-over-year revenue growth eased to 69% in Q1 this year. For the upcoming quarter, analysts tracked by LSEG expect revenue to rise 53% to $45.9 billion.

The centerpiece of Nvidia’s roadmap is Blackwell, a lineup that includes individual graphics processors and complete systems that tie together 72 GPUs. Strong Blackwell demand would signal key customers are staying the course, said Ryuta Makino of Gamco Investors, which holds a stake. 

In May, Nvidia said the new product family reached $27 billion in sales, about 70% of data center revenue, up sharply from $11 billion in the prior quarter. As Blackwell systems roll out, industry watchers expect their higher compute capacity to help organizations such as OpenAI and Anthropic train more capable AI models. 

OpenAI’s GPT-5, announced this month, was trained on Nvidia’s previous-generation Hopper chips rather than Blackwell.

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