Kakao Mobility Partners With Nvidia to Develop Autonomous Kia Vehicles

What happened

On Nov. 9, Kakao Mobility signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Nvidia on autonomous driving technology cooperation at the Westin Seoul Parnas in Gangnam, Seoul; the signing was attended by Kim Jin-gyu, executive vice president of Kakao Mobility's Physical AI division, and Gaurav Agarwal, senior director of Nvidia's automotive business. The agreement centers on combining Kakao Mobility's proprietary autonomous driving software with Nvidia's computing and sensor technologies and integrating them into PBVs manufactured by Kia, with the goal of developing a Level 4 autonomous driving system capable of operating without driver intervention. Kakao Mobility plans to introduce a high-performance autonomous driving computing unit (ADCU) equipped with two Nvidia DRIVE AGX Thor platforms, and will adopt Nvidia's Hyperion sensor and computing reference architecture plus Nvidia's integrated safety system Halos for development and validation of autonomous driving software. The technology will initially be applied to Kia's PBVs; on July 16, Kakao Mobility signed a strategic partnership with Kia to develop autonomous vehicles based on Kia's PV5 model and supply DevKits connecting the vehicles with autonomous driving systems. Kia plans to prioritize supplying vehicles for Kakao Mobility's autonomous driving pilot program this year, and over the longer term the two companies will jointly develop PBVs tailored to autonomous driving services.

Impact and signal

Affected components and suppliers

Source and time

Source: The Elec · 11/9/2026 · View original source