Nvidia’s ‘robot brain’ chip, Thor, goes on sale around the world

Nvidia announced Monday that its latest robotics chip module, the Jetson AGX Thor, is now on sale for $3,499 as a developer kit.

The company calls the chip a “robot brain.” The first kits ship next month, Nvidia said last week, and the chips will allow customers to create robots.

After a company uses the developer kit to prototype their robot, Nvidia will sell Thor T5000 modules that can be installed in production-ready robots. If a company needs more than 1,000 Thor chips, Nvidia will charge $2,999 per module.

CEO Jensen Huang has said robotics is the company’s largest growth opportunity outside of artificial intelligence, which has led to Nvidia’s overall sales more than tripling in the past two years.

“We do not build robots, we do not build cars, but we enable the whole industry with our infrastructure computers and the associated software,” said Deepu Talla, Nvidia’s vice president of robotics and edge AI, on a call with reporters Friday.

The Jetson Thor chips are based on a Blackwell graphics processor, which is Nvidia’s current generation of technology used in its AI chips, as well as its chips for computer games.

Nvidia said that its Jetson Thor chips are 7.5 times faster than its previous generation. That allows them to run generative AI models, including large language models and visual models that can interpret the world around them, which is essential for humanoid robots, Nvidia said. The Jetson Thor chips are equipped with 128GB of memory, which is essential for big AI models.

Companies including Agility Robotics, Amazon, Meta and Boston Dynamics are using its Jetson chips, Nvidia said. Nvidia has also invested in robotics companies such as Field AI.

However, robotics remains a small business for Nvidia, accounting for about 1% of the company’s total revenue, despite the fact that it has launched several new robot chips since 2014. But it’s growing fast.

Nvidia recently combined its business units to group its automotive and robotics divisions into the same line item. That unit reported $567 million in quarterly sales in May, which represented a 72% increase on an annual basis.

The company said its Jetson Thor chips can be used for self-driving cars as well, especially from Chinese brands. Nvidia calls its car chips Drive AGX, and while they are similar to its robotics chips, they run an operating system called Drive OS that’s been tuned for automotive purposes.