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CES 2026 Highlights: AMD, Nvidia, and OpenAI Spotlight the Growing Demand for AI Compute
Las Vegas, CES 2026: Artificial intelligence and the growing need for massive computing power dominated the CES 2026 stage, with major announcements and high-profile appearances from AMD, Nvidia, OpenAI, and leading robotics companies.
AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su delivered the opening CES keynote, emphasizing that AI is “the most important technology of the last 50 years” and reaffirming AMD’s focus on building the compute infrastructure needed to support it. Su highlighted the rapid growth of AI adoption, noting that usage has surged from one million to more than one billion users since the launch of ChatGPT, with projections reaching over five billion in the coming years.
The keynote featured a long list of guests, including OpenAI president Greg Brockman, World Labs co-founder Dr. Fei-Fei Li, executives from Blue Origin, Absci, and Generative Bionics, as well as U.S. National Science and Technology Advisor Michael Kratsios. Su closed the event by awarding $20,000 education grants to student winners of an AMD-sponsored hackathon with Hack Club.
A recurring theme throughout the keynote was the industry’s dependence on compute. Brockman stressed that limited access to GPUs is one of the biggest constraints facing AI development today, adding that future economic growth could soon be tied directly to a country’s available compute resources. “The world is going to require far more compute than we have right now,” Brockman said, predicting that GDP growth may increasingly depend on AI infrastructure.
AMD also unveiled its Ryzen AI 400 Series processors, designed for AI-powered personal computers. According to the company, the new chips deliver up to 1.3x faster multitasking and 1.7x faster content creation compared to competitors, reinforcing AMD’s belief that AI PCs represent the future of consumer computing.
On the infrastructure side, Su highlighted AMD’s Helios rack, a massive open modular AI rack developed with Meta. Weighing nearly 7,000 pounds — roughly the same as two compact cars — Helios is designed to combine CPUs, GPUs, and networking to support large-scale AI workloads.
World Labs’ Dr. Fei-Fei Li demonstrated her company’s first product, Marble, a generative 3D world model that can rapidly create physics-aware virtual environments from scratch or from real-world photos. Li emphasized that inference speed is critical to making these digital worlds feel responsive and coherent.
Meanwhile, Nvidia used its CES keynote to push deeper into robotics and AI infrastructure. CEO Jensen Huang announced that Nvidia’s Vera Rubin chip architecture is now in production and will ramp up later this year. The company also revealed new robot foundation models and simulation tools aimed at making Nvidia the default platform for general-purpose robotics.
Nvidia highlighted improvements in energy efficiency as well, noting that its latest AI systems can be cooled with hot water and without chillers — a potential breakthrough as data center power and water usage face increasing scrutiny.
Robotics also took center stage across the show floor. Nvidia showcased its latest robotics ambitions with onstage demonstrations, while Uber, Lucid, and Nuro unveiled the production-intent version of their upcoming robotaxi, built on the Lucid Gravity platform. The premium autonomous vehicle is expected to begin offering rides later this year.
Overall, CES 2026 underscored a clear message from industry leaders: AI’s future depends not just on smarter models, but on the rapid expansion of compute, energy-efficient hardware, and scalable infrastructure — with AMD and Nvidia positioning themselves at the center of that transformation.