Foxconn and Nvidia are building 'AI factories'

Nvidia and Foxconn are working together to build so-called "AI factories," a new class of data centers that promise to provide supercomputing powers to accelerate the development of self-driving cars, autonomous machines and industrial robots.

Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang and Foxconn chairman and CEO Young Liu announced the collaboration at Hon Hai Tech Day in Taiwan on Tuesday. The AI factory is based off an Nvidia GPU computing infrastructure that will be built to process, refine and transform vast amounts of data into valuable AI models and information.

"We're building this entire end-to-end system where on the one hand, you're building this advanced EV car...with an AI brain inside that allows it to interact with drivers and interact with passengers, as well as autonomously drive, complemented by an AI factory that develops a software for this car," said Huang onstage at the event. "This car will go through life experience and collect more data. The data will go to the AI factory, where the AI factory will improve the software and update the entire AI fleet."

The AI factory tie-up builds off a partnership between Nvidia and Foxconn announced in January to develop autonomous vehicle platforms. That agreement involved Foxconn becoming a primary supplier of electronic control units (ECUs) for automakers, which will be built with Nvidia's Drive Orin system-on-a-chip (SoC), a supercomputing AI platform that supports autonomous driving functions. On Tuesday, Foxconn also committed to manufacturing ECUs with Drive Thor, Nvidia's next-gen SoC, after production starts in 2025.

As part of that partnership, Foxconn -- which has been steadily unveiling off-the-shelf EV platforms for automakers to purchase -- said the vehicles it makes as a contract manufacturer will be built with Nvidia's Drive Hyperion 9 platform, which includes not only Drive Thor, but also a suite of sensors like cameras, radar, lidar and ultrasonic that are necessary for self-driving capabilities.

Foxconn is already contracted to build EVs for Fisker, even as it gets sued by its erstwhile partner Lordstown Motors. The automaker will need scale in order to make its AI factories viable, especially if it's going to compete with Tesla.