Gary Black Says Tesla Won't Be Alone In Solving Autonomy After Nvidia's Alpamayo Reveal: 'Expect Unsupervised Autonomy To Be Democratized Quickly'

Future Fund LLC managing director Gary Black has said that Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) won't be the only company solving unsupervised autonomous driving, as Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) revealed its Alpamayo autonomous technology.

Tesla's Rivals Will Offer Unsupervised Autonomy

The investor, in a post on the social media platform X on Wednesday, shared that people did not believe him when he said that rivals of the Elon Musk-backed automaker would also develop self-driving technology.

Black said that over "five competitors" to Tesla's Robotaxi have already completed "750K paid unsupervised autonomous ride-hailing trips per week." He also said that other competitors could offer Level 4 autonomous driving via Nvidia’s new Alpamayo technology this year. Being an open-source model, it can be incorporated by companies into their autonomous driving pursuits.

Alpamayo, revealed at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2026, has been touted as the “ChatGPT moment for physical AI” by the chipmaker’s CEO Jensen Huang. The model is based on a vision-language-action (VLA) approach and utilizes a combination of radar, cameras and LiDAR sensors. Huang also said that the model possesses human-like reasoning.

"Investors are starting to understand that unsupervised autonomy is about to become table stakes for every automobile manufacturer," Black said.

Democratizing Autonomous Driving

He also predicted that Uber Technologies Inc. (NYSE:UBER) will begin offering Robotaxis on its platform for "a reduced price as soon as regulators pass autonomous driving standards."

The investor also shared that ride-hailing platforms could make autonomy more widely available. "We can expect unsupervised autonomy to be democratized quickly via ride-hailing platforms," in the near future, Black said.

It's worth noting that Uber and Lyft Inc. (NASDAQ:LYFT) have partnered with Baidu Inc.'s (NASDAQ:BIDU) Robotaxi company Apollo Go in London this year. Tesla's Robotaxi rival Alphabet Inc.'s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) autonomous robotaxi company Waymo is also eyeing an expansion into London later this year.

Elon Musk On Nvidia's Self-Driving

Musk, following the reveal of Nvidia’s self-driving technology, shared that the distribution for the technology could pose a challenge for the chipmaker in its autonomous goal. His comments were echoed by Tesla's AI Chief, Ashok Elluswamy.

The Tesla CEO predicted that it could take some time, outlining a five or six-year-long timeframe for Nvidia's Alpamayo technology to pose a competitive challenge to the automaker's Full Self-Driving (FSD) system.

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