CES 2026 is in full swing in Las Vegas, with the show floor open to the public after a packed couple of days occupied by press conferences from the likes of Nvidia, Sony, and AMD and previews from Sunday’s Unveiled event. As has been the case for the past two years at CES, AI is at the forefront of […]
CES 2026 has officially kicked off in Las Vegas, dominated by the transition from “Digital AI” to “Physical AI”—intelligent systems that interact directly with the world. From high-powered silicon to literal AI holograms on your desk, here is a breakdown of the major reveals from the show floor.
Nvidia: The Era of “Physical AI”
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang centered his keynote on AI that can “reason.”
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Vera Rubin Architecture: Nvidia’s next-generation AI superchip platform is now in full production. Named after the famed astronomer, it aims to reduce AI inference costs to one-tenth while requiring significantly fewer chips than the previous Blackwell architecture.
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RTX 50-Series (Blackwell): The flagship GeForce RTX 5090 was the star, featuring 32GB of GDDR7 memory and a 2X performance jump over the RTX 4090. It launches January 30 for $1,999.
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DLSS 4.5: A major software leap that introduces “Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation,” capable of boosting frame rates by up to 6X on RTX 50-series cards.
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Alpamayo: An open-source family of “reasoning” AI models for autonomous vehicles. Unlike standard systems, Alpamayo can “think through” rare road scenarios and explain its driving decisions.
AMD: Doubling Down on Gaming and “Strix Halo”
AMD focused on reclaiming the gaming crown and expanding its powerful all-in-one chips.
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Ryzen 7 9850X3D: This new 8-core gaming beast features a massive 5.6GHz boost clock (up from 5.2GHz on the 9800X3D). AMD claims it beats Intel’s Core Ultra 9 285K by an average of 27% in gaming.
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Ryzen AI 400 Series: A refresh of the AI 300 series, these chips (codenamed “Gorgon Point”) hit 60 TOPS of NPU performance, meeting the latest “Copilot+ PC” requirements for desktops and laptops.
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Strix Halo Expansion: AMD added the Ryzen AI Max+ 392 (12-core) and 388 (8-core). Both feature a massive 40-core integrated GPU, designed to give thin laptops discrete-GPU-level power without the extra heat or bulk.
Razer: AI Companions and Wearables
Razer lived up to its reputation for “Project” concepts that push the boundaries of weird and cool.
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Project Ava: An AI “desk companion” that lives inside a transparent cylinder. It features a 5.5-inch animated hologram (Kira) that watches your screen, offers gaming advice, and even handles non-gaming tasks like summarizing books.
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Project Motoko: A wireless AI headset with dual first-person cameras. It “sees” what you see, allowing you to ask, “How do I beat this boss?” or “What can I cook with these ingredients?” while looking at your kitchen counter.
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Wolverine V3 Bluetooth: Claimed to be the world’s fastest wireless controller, developed with LG to achieve sub-3ms response times for cloud gaming.
Other Notable Highlights
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Intel Panther Lake: Intel teased the Core Ultra Series 3, built on the 18A node, promising a 77% jump in gaming performance over the current Lunar Lake chips.
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Samsung’s 130-inch Micro RGB: A massive concept TV that won “Best of Innovation.” Samsung also announced it aims to double its Gemini-powered AI device count to 800 million in 2026.
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Lego “Smart Brick”: A 2×4 brick with a built-in speaker and sensors that allows Lego sets to make sounds and react to how they are being played with.