Al Root

Shares of lidar maker Aeva Technologies surged early Tuesday after the company said it had been selected as a lidar supplier for Nvidia's autonomous-vehicle platform.

Aeva stock was up almost 33% at $17.39 a share, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average were up 0.1% and flat, respectively.

The jump followed a Monday announcement that Aeva was selected to be the lidar supplier for Nvidia's DRIVE Hyperion autonomous vehicle platform.

DRIVE Hyperion allows automakers to build self-driving cars using Nvidia's hardware and software, rather than developing those systems from scratch.

The platform includes Nvidia's onboard Thor computers, autonomous-driving software, and sensors such as cameras, radar, ultrasonic sensors, and lidar -- laser-based radar that is particularly useful for depth perception and night driving.

Famously, Tesla, a pioneer in self-driving cars, has avoided lidar, believing cameras are good enough and that lidar creates unneeded confusion for the self-driving systems.

The benefit to Aeva is clear: it could gain business from automakers that adopt Nvidia's platform.

Nvidia's self-driving push could also pose a competitive threat to Tesla. Much of Tesla's roughly $1.5 trillion valuation is tied to artificial-intelligence applications such as self-driving taxis. Tesla launched a robo-taxi service in Austin, Texas, in June, but rival systems built with Nvidia's technology could chip away at its share of the autonomous-vehicle market.

Tesla stock was down 2.6% in early trading at $439.75. Nvidia shares were up 1.1% at $190.23.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

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January 06, 2026 10:19 ET (15:19 GMT)

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