he Deep View was on the ground at CES 2026 to sort out the real AI advances from the marketing stunts and hardware slop. These were the ones that made the cut.
1. AI got a speed boost and a price drop
Nvidia gave us the biggest surprise of CES by announcing (about six months ahead of schedule) the release of its next-gen Vera Rubin chip for AI training and inference. It can cut inference costs by up to 10x and train mixture-of-experts models with 1/4 as many GPUs as its current Blackwell chips. AMD announced that its AI chips have achieved a 1,000x performance boost over the past 4 years. —Jason Hiner
2. Robots are now 'Physical AI'
Tech firms are keen to give AI a physical form, and CES was all in on the trend. Nvidia was the star of the show, unveiling the Alpamayo self-driving platform, new Cosmos world models, and the GR00T humanoid models. Meanwhile, Franka Robotics displayed its AI-powered robotic arms; LEM Surgical unveiled a spine surgery robot; and AGIBOT showed off a dancing humanoid for its US debut. Don't get too excited about home robots yet, because enterprise is the physical AI cash cow. —Nat Rubio-Licht
3. Industrial AI enters its hype era
What a tidal wave of industrial AI and enterprise AI announcements we saw at CES 2026. Siemens led the charge with its new digital twin technology that extends beyond product development. It can now use AI to simulate operations and become an engine for optimization and continuous improvement. From the new enterprise pavilion in North Hall came big AI announcements from Caterpillar, Oshkosh, Neural Concept, Lenovo, Hyundai, Hitachi, and others. This is clearly one of the fastest-expanding areas of CES. —Jason Hiner
4. Quantum wants to amp up AI
Quantum scored an entire pavilion called CES Foundry, dedicated to companies like D-Wave, Quantinuum and Quantum Computing Inc. (QCi), signaling that it's no longer a lab project. Mixed opinions abound as to when the tech will reach large-scale deployment, but experts agree that quantum will be a catalyst for AI. CES examples included QCi demoing its quantum machine learning technology for things like fraud detection, drug discovery and financial forecasting. —Nat Rubio-Licht
5. An unexpected winner in consumer AI
Audio emerged as the best consumer AI category of the show, with products often built on Gemini, ChatGPT and Claude models. Some that caught our eye include Elehear and Cearvol’s AI-powered hearing aids, Subtle Computing’s voice-isolating earbuds, and Gyges Labs’ note-taking voice ring and agent companion. The form factor presents a low barrier to entry, but the products will have to niche down to compete with Google, OpenAI, and other giants. — Nat Rubio-Licht
6. AI glasses spark copycat boom
AI glasses aimed at chipping away at Meta's 70% market share were everywhere at CES. Lenovo, XGIMI, Solos, Cellid, Vuzix, LLVision, Asus, and Rokid all introduced new products. Thankfully, none of them are pure knock-offs. Each has a unique focus, from live translation to industrial tasks to lightweight displays to gaming. The jury is still out on whether AI-on-your-face becomes a trend, but it's going to get plenty of chances in 2026. —Jason Hiner