Alibaba, Nvidia collaborate on advanced autonomous-driving solution, computing services

Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud computing services unit and semiconductor powerhouse Nvidia are collaborating on an artificial intelligence (AI) initiative that will enable Chinese automakers to advance the autonomous driving experience for smart vehicle owners.

Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology backbone of the e-commerce giant, on Friday announced that collaboration, as it unveiled a large multimodal model (LMM) solution for automotive applications that it co-developed with Nvidia and start-up Banma Network Technology, Alibaba’s intelligent cockpit solution provider, at the Apsara Conference that runs until Saturday. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Hangzhou-based Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen portfolio of proprietary large language models (LLMs) – including Qwen2-7B and Qwen2-VL – have been integrated with Nvidia’s Drive AGX Orin platform for autonomous vehicles. LLMs are the technology underpinning generative AI services like ChatGPT.

This marks the first integration of Alibaba Cloud’s large AI models into Nvidia’s Drive automotive platform, which major Chinese electric vehicle (EV) makers – including Li Auto, Great Wall Motors, Geely Auto’s Zeekr Intelligent Technology and the EV unit of Xiaomi – are using to power their next-generation fleets.

“Together with our partners, we want to empower more businesses and individuals to unlock the potential of generative AI,” Alibaba Cloud chief technology officer Zhou Jingren said at the event.