Decoder with Nilay Patel · Monday, July 13, 2026
Xinju Wu, head of Automotive at NVIDIA, explains the automotive industry's rapid evolution from mechanical to software-defined and now AI-defined vehicles. He notes that central compute architecture is becoming the standard for competitiveness, with partners like Mercedes already adopting it.
“Um, actually, I've been working in the auto industry, well, not exactly in the auto industry, but, you know, let's say working in the automotive sector for, um, probably 15 years, uh, starting from my career in Qualcomm. I was heading the Qualcomm automotive team, uh, for a while. Obviously, we have heard the word basically software defined vehicle, and then basically right now with the AI technology, it's really getting into the next phase, what do we call AI defined vehicle, essentially.”
“AI is impacting the whole industry in in every level.”