Here are the biggest announcements coming out of the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show, from robots to chips

Nvidia's Jensen Huang launches Vera Rubin computing platforms

On Monday, ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show, Huang officially introduced the Vera Rubin architecture, which is now in production and expected to ramp up in volume in the second half of the year. This move follows a blockbuster year for its Blackwell chip, as demand for AI infrastructure continued to surge.

In a press briefing ahead of Huang's keynote, Dion Harris, Nvidia's senior director of HPC and AI infrastructure solutions, described Vera Rubin as "six chips that make one AI supercomputer."

"Vera Rubin is designed to address this fundamental challenge that we have: The amount of computation necessary for AI is skyrocketing," Huang told the audience during a presentation at the CES.

Huang added that compared to the Blackwell model, Rubin marks a leap in performance, with more than triple the speed, could run inference five times faster, and can deliver significantly more inference compute per watt of energy.

Rubin was first announced in 2024 and has been slated to replace Blackwell ever since. The early debut comes months ahead of the late-2026 timeline Nvidia had previously projected.

Named after astronomer Vera Rubin, who discovered the existence of dark matter, Nvidia said in a press release that the architecture is designed to support more complex, agent-style AI workloads, as well as more networking and data movement.

The Rubin systems are already lined up for deployment across much of the cloud industry. Nvidia said partners, including Amazon Web Services, OpenAI, Anthropic, alongside the upcoming Doudna system at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, all plan to use the new platform.

The accelerated launch comes shortly after Nvidia reported record data center revenue, up 66% from a year earlier, driven largely by demand for Blackwell and Blackwell Ultra GPUs. Those chips have become a benchmark for the current AI boom are widely seen as a test of whether spending on AI infrastructure is sustainable.

Huang has previously estimated that between $3 trillion and $4 trillion could be spent globally on AI infrastructure over the next five years. Nvidia said products and services built on the Rubin platform will begin rolling out from partners in the second half of 2026.

Nvidia's push into autonomous driving

Nvidia's Huang also used his presentation to unveil Alpamayo, a new open AI model and toolset designed to bring reasoning to autonomous vehicles.

Huang said that Mercedes-Benz cars powered by the system are already expected to hit the road in the first quarter of 2026.

"Our vision is that someday, every single car, every single truck, will be autonomous," said Huang.

Alpamayo is Nvidia's first full-stack push into self-driving technology, with the goal of using vision-language-action models to handle rare and unfamiliar driving scenarios.

Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius said during the presentation that he recently tested the Nvidia-powered system on public roads and drove for more than an hour through heavy traffic.

"It feels that the car is on rails. You're just driving, and it does everything," Källenius said. "If you're moving an object that weighs 4,000 pounds at 50 miles an hour, sorry is not going to cut it."

Boston Dynamics's humanoid robot gets a boost from Google's Gemini

Boston Dynamics is teaming up with Google DeepMind to integrate the Gemini AI into its humanoid robot, Atlas, and its robot dog called Spot. Unveiled with Boston Dynamics's parent company, Hyundai Motor Group, at CES on Monday, the partnership aims to let Atlas understand natural-language commands, adapt on the fly, and interact more naturally with people, with the goal of pushing the machine from lab demos into real-world work.

Executives of Boston Dynamics said in a press release that by embedding a foundation model, Atlas could move beyond preprogrammed actions to navigate unfamiliar environments and identify and manipulate objects, all of which are core skills for manual labor.

"Atlas is going to revolutionize the way industry works," said CEO Robert Playter in the press release, "And it marks the first step toward a long-term goal we have dreamed about since we were children—useful robots that can walk into our homes and help make our lives safer, more productive, and more fulfilling."

Lego gets its biggest update in decades

Lego isn't usually a headliner at CES, but the toy giant used the tech show this week to unveil one of its biggest product changes in decades.

On Tuesday, Lego introduced the Smart Brick, a classic two-by-four block that contains a tiny computer packed with sensors, lights, sound, and wireless connectivity. The bricks are part of what Lego calls a new "Smart Play" system, designed to bring digital effects into traditional building without relying on screens.

In Lego's press release, the company said that each Smart Brick can detect nearby bricks, measure movement and tilt, trigger sounds, and light up using built-in LEDs. The bricks also use Bluetooth mesh networking to communicate with one another and NFC to interact with special tiles and minifigures, enabling effects like glowing lightsabers, engine sounds, and light-up blasters in themed builds. Lego says the custom chip inside each brick is smaller than a single Lego stud.

The Smart Bricks will debut on March 1 in three new Star Wars sets: a $70 TIE Fighter, a $100 X-Wing, and a $160 Throne Room set. Lego said the bricks are wirelessly charged and designed to last for years.

Uber gives the world a first look at its robotaxi

Uber unveiled the "production intent design" of its robotaxi at CES, built in partnership with Lucid and autonomous driving startup Nuro.

Based on photos, the vehicle appears to be a sleek, sensor-packed Lucid Gravity SUV. According to Uber's press release, the robotaxi is also loaded with high-resolution cameras, lidar, radar, and a glowing roof-mounted "halo" that boosts sensor visibility and doubles as an LED display for passengers. Inside, there's room for up to six riders and their luggage, plus a large screen that lets passengers control music, climate, heated seats, or hit the emergency button if things go sideways.

Production is expected to begin later this year at Lucid's Arizona factory, with the robotaxi slated to roll out to riders in late 2026.

AMD's Lisa Su shows off higher-performing chips

The CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, Lisa Su, presented the company's new MI400 series chips on Monday evening, which she said are enterprise-focused chips designed to run inside existing on-premise infrastructure.

The Nvidia rival also brought OpenAI president Greg Brockman onstage to preview AMD's MI500 processor, which Su said would deliver 1,000 times the performance of an older generation and is expected to launch in 2027.

During her keynote, Su said the AI industry is entering an era of "yotta-scale computing," as demand for both training and inference explodes.

"The constraint is no longer the model," Su said, adding that the real bottleneck is the underlying compute infrastructure.

Gaming company Razer is bringing AI to your desk

Gaming company Razer unveiled Project AVA, which is a 3D holographic "desk companion" that lives inside a small physical display and runs on xAI's Grok AI. The hologram can handle tasks like scheduling, live translation, spreadsheet analysis, and even motivational pep talks.

AI companions are becoming a crowded space, with players ranging from Replika to Elon Musk's xAI, but Razer is the largest company yet to push the idea into a physical, three-dimensional form. Project AVA allows users to choose from five holographic avatars, including a floating Razer logo and four human-like characters that the company says are still being refined.

The companions stand about 5.5 inches tall and use cameras and microphones for what Razer calls "full contextual awareness." While the current version relies on Grok, Razer said it plans to support other AI models in the future.

Project AVA is now available to reserve online with a $20 deposit, said Razer in a press release. The gaming company hasn't announced pricing yet, but expects the device to ship in the second half of 2026.

LG is bringing the dream of a robot helper closer

Appliance giant LG unveiled CLOiD, its first AI-powered home robot, and gave attendees a live look at what it can (and can't) do at the CES.

According to LG's press release, the life-size humanoid robot is designed to tackle complex chores, like folding laundry, handling basic kitchen tasks, and coordinating smart appliances.

From videos of demos at LG's sprawling smart home setup in Las Vegas, CLOiD can be seen slowly folding dish towels, neatly stacking them after about 30 seconds per towel. It was also filmed warming a croissant by placing a tray into the oven and fetching a jug of milk from the fridge, though it fell short of accurately pouring it into a glass.

According to footage of the demo, CLOiD also "noticed" dirt on the floor and summoned an LG robot vacuum to clean it up, showing its capabilities as a household manager.

CLOiD is still a concept with no release date.