Nvidia has taken a major step towards accelerating AI progress with the launch of new open models. These innovations, presented at the NeurIPS AI conference, empower research and development in both physical and digital realms, including groundbreaking advancements for autonomous driving. The tech giant announced its commitment to expanding its collection of open AI models, tools, and datasets, including the introduction of the Nvidia Drive Alpamayo-R1 (AR1) model, a world-leading VLA (vision language action) model designed for self-driving cars. AR1’s chain-of-thought reasoning capabilities enhance safety and autonomous vehicle performance in complex road scenarios like pedestrian crossings or obstructed lanes.