CES 2026 is winding down in Las Vegas, as the consumer tech industry and everyone swarming around it begin their return flights home. Over the past few days, we saw a slew of announcements from mainstays like Nvidia, Sony, and AMD, along with smaller companies and startups vying for attention through the Unveiled event (CES’s showcase for new products) and across the show floor. As has been the case for the past two years, AI was 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. This year, physical AI was particularly prominent, taking the place that agentic AI held last year as the show’s buzzy topic. That focus on physical AI came alongside a big focus on robotics, with robots demonstrated all over the show and showcased in numerous press events. To relive the reactions and thoughts from our team on the ground, you can go back in time via our live blog right here. Otherwise, let’s dive into some of the biggest and most notable announcements from CES. Equity sums up the highs, and lows, of CES 2026 If audio or video are more your thing, then head right to the latest episode of our Equity podcast, which goes into detail about what we thought about the show, or watch the full episode below on YouTube. 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. Techcrunch event San Francisco | October 13-15, 2026 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. 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 Nvidi