Today in Las Vegas, Nvidia $NVDA ( ▲ 1.85% ) CEO Jensen Huang is set to take the stage at CES to unveil the company’s latest innovations. If you have watched Huang’s keynotes before, you know there is one topic that consistently gets him fired up: digital twins.
Nvidia’s Omniverse platform lets companies simulate factories, assembly lines, and robotics systems using Nvidia’s software and hardware. The promise is simple. Train robots and optimize workflows in a virtual world first, then deploy them in the real one, saving time, money, and costly mistakes.
The vision is massive, the revenue less so
According to a new report from The Information, Omniverse has yet to generate meaningful revenue, despite Nvidia frequently highlighting a long list of customers using the platform. Internally, the slow traction has reportedly been a source of frustration, especially given how central Omniverse is to Huang’s long-term vision for industrial AI.
Some customers told The Information that the software can be difficult to use and struggles to accurately simulate robots interacting with complex, real-world objects. The report also notes that Nvidia quietly shut down its Omniverse Cloud service in August due to weak demand.
A rare stumble for an execution machine
Nvidia has a strong track record of turning ambitious ideas into major businesses, from GPUs to AI accelerators to data center software. That makes Omniverse stand out as an unusual laggard, especially given how aggressively it has been promoted as a cornerstone of the company’s AI future.
The long-term opportunity in digital twins and industrial simulation remains enormous, particularly as factories become more automated. But for now, Omniverse looks more like a long-dated option than a near-term revenue driver, even as Nvidia’s core AI businesses continue to fire on all cylinders.