- What's Up in AI
- Posts
- Updates from the CES 2026 - Part 1
Updates from the CES 2026 - Part 1
Welcome to the Physical AI Era where your Toaster Gets a PhD
What's Up in AI
January 08, 2026
In partnership with
Hey there, AI Enthusiast!
Welcome to the CES 2026 WRAP !! This was the moment AI left the cloud and entered the physical world. We're talking robots that climb stairs, factories that think for themselve, and semiconductors so powerful they make last year's chips look like pocket calculators.
Their basic theme was the jump from "speculative AI" (cool demos, unclear utility) to "Physical AI" (AI that operates in manufacturing floors, city infrastructure, and your actual home). Two massive breakthroughs: the validation of the 18Å semiconductor process and the arrival of "agentic" software.
Translation: AI just got a body for for literally everything.
Become the go-to AI expert in 30 days
AI keeps coming up at work, but you still don't get it?
That's exactly why 1M+ professionals working at Google, Meta, and OpenAI read Superhuman AI daily.
Here's what you get:
Daily AI news that matters for your career - Filtered from 1000s of sources so you know what affects your industry.
Step-by-step tutorials you can use immediately - Real prompts and workflows that solve actual business problems.
New AI tools tested and reviewed - We try everything to deliver tools that drive real results.
All in just 3 minutes a day
🔥 The Chip Wars Just Went Nuclear
NVIDIA, Intel, and AMD all dropped platforms designed specifically for the era of trillion-parameter AI models in the CES 2026. The new metric of success is not raw computing power, but "token cost reduction" and "memory bandwidth saturation." Focus is on speed this time.
NVIDIA’s NVL72 rack fuses 72 Rubin GPUs + 36 Vera CPUs into a single AI supercomputer: Rubin brings adaptive precision AI cores, HBM4 memory (22 TB/s) and 3.6 ExaFLOPS of inference.
Vera CPUs use 88 Olympus cores optimized f
or AI data movement.
Result: 10× cheaper inference, 4× fewer GPUs for training → far cheaper, far more powerful AI for everyone.Intel’s Core Ultra Series 3 (Panther Lake) is built on Intel’s new 18A process using RibbonFET and PowerVia, matching the world’s most advanced chip nodes. It packs next-gen P-cores, E-cores, Xe3 graphics and a 50 TOPS NPU (180 TOPS platform) with up to 27 hours of battery life.
Result: Laptops and edge devices can run powerful AI locally with high efficiency, reliability, and long battery life.AMD’s Ryzen AI 400 brings 60 TOPS NPUs and Zen 5 cores to both laptops and desktops. The Max+ variants support up to 128GB unified memory, letting massive AI models run fully on-device.
Result: High-end AI is no longer cloud-only — your personal computer becomes a serious AI machine.
PepsiCo tested its factories on a computer before changing anything in real life. By doing this, they found 90% of problems early, increased production by 20%, and reduced costs by 10–15%.
This was done using Siemens’ Digital Twin Composer, powered by NVIDIA Omniverse, which creates a realistic digital copy of a factory so companies can test changes safely before building.
With NVIDIA’s AI and simulation tech, these digital factories now run much faster and can even adjust and improve themselves.
What this means for you:
Products will be made faster, cheaper, and with fewer mistakes — which means better quality at lower prices.
Caterpillar now lets operators talk to machines using the Cat AI Assistant, setting safety limits and controls with voice.
This runs on Helios, which analyzes data from 1.5 million connected machines worldwide.
They already use this tech in self-driving mining trucks that have moved 11 billion tons with zero injuries — and now it’s coming to construction sites.
What this means for you:
Building will be safer, faster, and far more efficient.
🎮 Consumer Tech Gets Weird (In a Good Way)
CES 2026 was full of bold, sci-fi-looking gadgets — especially from ASUS ROG.
They launched the world’s first 16-inch dual-screen gaming laptop, letting you use two OLED screens for gaming, work, or sharing.
Their new ROG G1000 desktop even projects holograms inside the PC case.
And a special Kojima-designed gaming tablet brought anime-style design and serious AI power.
What this means for you:
Laptops and PCs are no longer boring boxes — they’re becoming more flexible, more creative, and more fun to use.
Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Carbon Aura lets you replace individual parts, making laptops easier to fix and more eco-friendly.
They also showed a rollable gaming laptop that expands its screen to 24 inches for a desktop-like experience.
All of it runs with Qira, Lenovo’s AI assistant that works across phones and PCs.
What this means for you:
Your laptop will last longer, waste less, and feel more flexible.
🏠 The Smart Home Finally Got Smart
CES 2026 showed that smart homes now actually work together, thanks to the Matter standard.
IKEA launched ultra-affordable smart devices — including $6 bulbs and $8 plugs — that connect directly to Apple Home, Google Home, and Alexa with no extra hub needed. Their new remote lets you control lights and fans with a simple scroll wheel.
Samsung SmartThings added Thread sharing, so devices from different brands can use the same strong home network.
Govee showed smart lights that change colors smoothly, create AI animations, and even copy real daylight with skylight-style ceiling lamps.
What this means for you:
Smart homes are finally cheap, simple, and reliable — no more juggling apps.
🚗 Self-Driving Cars That Can Explain Themselves
At CES 2026, cars moved from just seeing the road to understanding it.
NVIDIA’s Alpamayo AI models let vehicles reason through tricky situations and explain their decisions — like why they chose a certain path. Big brands like Lucid, Jaguar, and Uber are already using it.
Joby Aviation announced it will launch air taxis in Dubai later this year.
New tech like fold-away steering wheels and fog-seeing cameras showed how cars are becoming truly autonomous.
What this means for you:
Self-driving cars will be safer, smarter, and more trustworthy — and even flying taxis are becoming real.
📺 Display Tech — Bigger, Thinner, Wireless
CES 2026 turned TVs into giant digital windows — thinner, brighter, and even wireless.
Samsung unveiled a 130-inch Micro RGB TV with tiny self-lit LEDs for perfect color, zero glare, and a window-like frame that blends into your room.
LG showed a 9mm-thin Wallpaper OLED that sends 4K video wirelessly, so it mounts flat on the wall with no visible cables.
Hisense launched a 116-inch Mini-LED TV with extra color pixels, making it the most colorful screen at CES.
What this means for you:
TVs are becoming bigger, cleaner, and more like real windows into movies, games, and the world.
🧠 Health Tech — Helping Humans Do More
CES 2026 showed how tech is now improving the human body, not just gadgets.
L’Oréal introduced light-based tools that style hair with less damage and use LED masks to improve skin using safe infrared light.
Naqi Neural Earbuds let people control devices with tiny face and brain movements — no hands or voice needed.
New tools also help people walk better, move around on their own, and navigate the world even if they can’t see.
What this means for you:
Health and accessibility tech is making life easier, safer, and more independent for millions of people.
The best HR advice comes from those in the trenches. That’s what this is: real-world HR insights delivered in a newsletter from Hebba Youssef, a Chief People Officer who’s been there. Practical, real strategies with a dash of humor. Because HR shouldn’t be thankless—and you shouldn’t be alone in it.
And that's a wrap (for now)! 🎬...
Want more? You can Dive in below:
→ CES 2026 schedule
→ CES 2026 Live Updates
CES 2026 still has more surprises coming and if these early days are any indication, the weirdest and most fun tech is still ahead. We’ll be back tomorrow with the rest of the updates as they drop.
Hit reply and tell us what was your favorite announcement and that you can’t wait to try? We want to know! 💬
Until Next time…
What's Up in AI Team