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 many companies’ messaging, though the hardware upgrades and oddities that have long defined the annual event still have their place on the show floor and in adjacent announcements. We’ll be collecting the biggest reveals and surprises here, though you can still catch the spur-of-the-moment reactions and thoughts from our team on the ground via our live blog right here. Let’s dive right in, starting with some of Monday’s biggest players. Nvidia reveals AI model for autonomous vehicles, showcases Rubin architecture Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang delivered an expectedly lengthy presentation at CES, taking a victory lap for the company’s AI-driven successes, setting the stage for 2026, and yes, hanging out with some robots. The Rubin computing architecture, which has been developed to meet the increasing computation demands that AI adoption creates, is set to begin replacing Blackwell architecture in the second half of this year. It comes with speed and storage upgrades, but our senior AI editor Russell Brandom goes into the nitty-gritty of what distinguishes Rubin. And Nvidia continued its push to bring the AI revolution into the physical world, showcasing its Alpamayo family of open source AI models and tools that will be used by autonomous vehicles this year. That approach, as senior reporter Rebecca Bellan notes, mirrors the company’s broader efforts to make its infrastructure the Android for generalist robots. AMD’s keynote highlights new processors and partnerships AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su delivered the first keynote of CES, with a presentation that featured partners, including OpenAI president Greg Brockman, AI legend Fei-Fei Li, Luma AI CEO Amit Jain, and more. Techcrunch event San Francisco | October 13-15, 2026 Beyond the partner showcases, senior reporter Rebecca Szkutak detailed AMD’s approach toward expanding the reach of AI through personal computers using its Ryzen AI 400 Series processors. The standout oddities of CES Let’s face it, by this point in the show the major announcements have been made, products have been showcased, and it’s time to eye some of the most brow-raising reveals from CES. We started our list of what stood out to us as odd and noteworthy, but we’re open to more suggestions! Highlights from CES breakout sessions CES isn’t all hardware showcases and show floor attractions — there are plenty of additional industry panels and speakers drawing eyeballs. We kept tabs on a few notable highlights, ranging from Palmer Luckey pushing retro aesthetics, to why the “learn once, work forever” era may be over, to previews of the new Silicon Valley-based series “The Audacity,” to the expansion of Roku’s $3 streaming service, to All-In host Jason Calacanis putting a $25,000 bounty on an authentic Theranos device. Ford’s AI assistant debuts Ford is launching its assistant in the company’s app before a targeted 2027 release in its vehicles, with hosting managed by Google Cloud and the assistant itself built using off-the-shelf LLMs. As we noted in our coverage of the news, however, few details were offered around what drivers should expect from their experience with the assistant. Caterpillar, Nvidia partner on automated construction equipment As part of the ever-present push for AI’s impact on the physical world, Caterpillar and Nvidia announced a pilot program, “Cat AI Assistant,” which was demonstrated at CES Wednesday. This system, coming to one of Caterpillar’s excavator vehicles, is happening alongside another project to use Nvidia’s Omniverse simulation resources to help with construction project planning and execution. Hands-on with Clicks Communicator Image Credits:TechCrunch One of the buzziest reveals of the show is the debut phone from Clicks Technology, the $499 Communicator, which brings back BlackBerry vibes with its physical keyboard, plus a separate $79 slide-out physical keyboard that can be used with other devices. Check out our full rundown from the show floor here, but the Communicator makes a good first impression, per Consumer Editor Sarah Perez: “In our hands-on test, the phone felt good to hold — not too heavy or light, and was easy to grip. Gadway told me the company settled on the device’s final form after dozens of 3D-printed shapes. The winning design