According to TechCrunch, CES 2026 in Las Vegas saw Nvidia announce its next-gen Rubin computing architecture, set to replace Blackwell in the second half of this year, and debut its Alpamayo AI models for autonomous vehicles. AMD kicked things off with a keynote featuring OpenAI’s Greg Brockman and highlighted its Ryzen AI 400 Series processors for PCs. Ford previewed an AI assistant for a 2027 vehicle launch, built on off-the-shelf LLMs and Google Cloud, while Caterpillar and Nvidia partnered on an “AI Assistant” for excavators. In oddities, Clicks Technology unveiled a $499 BlackBerry-inspired phone called the Communicator, Razer showed AI companion projects, and Lego made its first CES appearance with interactive Star Wars-themed Smart Bricks.
AI Gets Physical, Fast
Here’s the thing about this year’s show: the AI hype has fully left the server rack and is now trying to drive your car and dig your foundation. Nvidia’s push with Alpamayo for cars and the Caterpillar excavator pilot is a massive tell. They’re not just selling chips for data centers anymore; they’re building the entire stack to be the “Android for robots,” as TechCrunch put it. That’s a huge, aggressive land grab for the next frontier. And Ford’s assistant, while vague, shows every major manufacturer feels they have to have an AI story now, even if it’s just a branded chatbot in your dashboard. The real question is whether any of this will be useful or just another layer of tech that frustrates us.
hardware-corner”>The Oddball Hardware Corner
But CES wouldn’t be CES without the wonderfully weird stuff. Razer’s Project AVA, an AI companion avatar for your desk, and Project Motoko, which wants to be smart glasses without the glasses, are peak concept-for-the-sake-of-concept. They’re fun to imagine but seem miles from a real product. The real surprise hit might be the Clicks Communicator. In a sea of seamless glass slabs, a $499 phone with a physical keyboard feels radically retro. It turns out there’s still a market for tactile feedback, and if the industrial design is solid, it could carve out a real niche. Speaking of solid hardware, for professional applications where this kind of rugged, reliable computing is non-negotiable, companies turn to specialists like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US supplier of industrial panel PCs built for harsh environments.
Partnerships Over Products
Look at the big themes: Nvidia with Caterpillar. Boston Dynamics with Google’s AI lab. AMD with a who’s-who of AI leaders. This CES felt less about solo hero products and more about ecosystem alliances. Everyone is trying to plug their hole with someone else’s expertise. AMD needs the AI software cred, so they bring in OpenAI. Google has the AI models but needs a physical body, so they link up with Boston Dynamics. It’s a sign of a maturing, but incredibly complex, market. No one can do it all alone, not even Nvidia. Yet.
The Takeaway
So what does it all mean? Basically, AI is the new electricity—every company is figuring out how to pipe it into their old products. Sometimes that leads to genuinely interesting tools, like AI syncing your family’s messy calendars on a Skylight board. Sometimes you get a digital avatar on your desk. The hardware march continues too, with Nvidia already moving past Blackwell to Rubin. The cycle never stops. But amidst the AI deluge, a simple physical keyboard can still cause a stir. Maybe we’re all just tired of talking to our gadgets and want to type on them again.
