Nvidia And Baidu Form Partnership On Artificial Intelligence, Self-Driving Cars

Nvidia has made some early entries into the self-driving car and artificial intelligence market, but now, the hardware company has joined up with a notable partner: Baidu.

Chinese search giant Baidu announced Wednesday it will work with Nvidia on initiatives focused on artificial intelligence. The two companies will partner together on areas including Baidu’s cloud offerings, consumer electronics, machine learning development and autonomous cars.

Read: Volvo, NVIDIA Partner On Self-Driving Technology, Fully Autonomous Cars May Be Launched By 2021

While both companies have worked together on smaller initiatives in the past, Wednesday’s agreement marks a formal partnership between Baidu and Nvidia. In a statement, Ian Buck, vice president of accelerated computing at Nvidia, said the companies are a strong match for further development in AI.

"NVIDIA and Baidu have pioneered significant advances in deep learning and AI," Buck said. "We believe AI is the most powerful technology force of our time, with the potential to revolutionize every industry. Our collaboration aligns our exceptional technical resources to create AI computing platforms for all developers -- from academic research, startups creating breakthrough AI applications, and autonomous vehicles."

For Baidu and Nvidia, the partnership will specifically focus on four product areas: Baidu will supplement its cloud computing services with Nvidia’s graphics processing hardware. Baidu will also optimize its PaddlePaddle open source deep learning framework for Nvidia hardware and work to make it more widely available for academics and research. On the consumer end, Baidu will also bring its DuerOS conversational AI system to the Nvidia Shield TV streaming box. Similar to Amazon’s Alexa or Google’s Assistant, DuerOS is a virtual assistant that users can use via voice command.

Nvidia And Baidu Researching Self-Driving Vehicles

Most notably, Nvidia will help bolster Baidu’s own autonomous car research. Nvidia’s DrivePX 2 hardware will help to power Baidu’s cars. In the past, both companies have collaborated on Baidu’s Apollo open platform for self-driving and autonomous cars.

Baidu’s partnership with Nvidia also comes as the search company significantly bolsters its self-driving car research efforts. The company’s Apollo platform has confirmed partners that include Chinese car manufacturer BAIC Motor, Intel and Ford Motor Company. Within the Chinese market, Baidu has set aggressive goals for its autonomous driving research and wants to get self-driving cars on the road by 2019.

Read: Baidu, BAIC Group Partner On Self-Driving Car

Internationally, Baidu is also one of several major players who’ve invested heavily in self-driving car research. Within the U.S., companies including Uber, Alphabet’s Waymo and Lyft have made significant development efforts for research and testing on public roads.

While Nvidia is most well-known for its consumer and enterprise-level graphics cards, the company has made several moves to broaden its scope into artificial intelligence and machine learning applications. Along with its current partnership with Baidu, the company will launch hardware designed for crypto-currency farming.