As CES 2026 winds down in Las Vegas, one theme is impossible to miss: AI has jumped off the screen and into the physical world.
Nvidia and AMD dominated headlines on the chip side, while Amazon and Google spent the week talking about how their models will run in homes, cars and factories. The buzzword of choice this year: “physical AI.”
TechCrunch’s live coverage from the show floor surfaced a mix of wild prototypes and quietly practical products. Here are the standouts.
‘Physical AI’ becomes the new buzzword
TechCrunch mobility editor Kirsten Korosec notes that the industry seems to have finally settled on “physical AI” as the label for robots and intelligent machines in the real world. Not long ago, executives bounced between “robotic AI” and “embodied AI.”
What changed? The influence of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, whose framing has spread quickly across vendors. Walk any major hall at CES this year and you’ll see “physical AI” slapped on everything from industrial arms to home gadgets.
Korosec and colleagues unpack the trend — and the money flowing into it — on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast recorded at the show.
LG’s CLOid wants to run your home
Electronics giant LG is leaning hard into the robot-as-assistant vision.
Its new bot, CLOid, is billed as an AI-powered home robot that can:
- Fold laundry
- Help make breakfast
- Patrol your home for signs of trouble
Lucas Ropek, reporting from the booth, describes CLOid as a generalist domestic helper designed to move through the house and take on a wide variety of chores. LG frames it as a way to offload routine household work, not just a cute companion.
It’s an ambitious pitch — and a very on-brand example of how “physical AI” is being packaged for consumers.
Rethinking the office commute with data
Away from the flashy robots, one of the most quietly impactful demos came from MyCommuters, a French startup founded by former commercial real estate broker Guillaume Acier.
Acier used to help companies pick offices by pointing at a big map of Paris on the wall. The choice usually reflected what executives wanted, not what worked for staff.
MyCommuters flips that script. The platform pulls together multiple datasets on how people move through a city so companies can:
- Score office locations by average employee commute time and cost
- Quickly generate reports on workers’ average carbon footprint (useful for compliance or subsidy applications)
- More accurately calculate commuter benefits
- Plan more realistic hybrid-work arrangements
Acier says early customers in France have seen a noticeable morale boost simply because staff can see their needs being factored into location decisions. “It’s everything,” he told TechCrunch at the show.
Coffee, crafts and clicky keyboards: CES is still about gadgets
Despite the AI hype, CES is still stacked with very human-scale hardware.
- XBrew Lab EverNitro: The startup showed off a countertop nitro beverage machine aimed at nitro coffee fans who don’t want the waste and expense of gas cartridges. It’s a reminder that there’s still plenty of room for non-AI innovation in the kitchen.
- Anker’s eufyMake E1 UV printer: Ropek also found one of the more fun creator tools at Eureka Park. The compact UV printer can etch designs directly onto objects — phone cases, cologne bottles, coasters, water bottles, canvas, metal sheets and more. It’s being pitched squarely at Etsy-style small businesses. Preorders are set at $2,299, and Anker staff on-site said it should be available later this year. EufyMake is funding it via Kickstarter and says it has already raised $46 million.
- Clicks Communicator: The retro-style keyboard case for smartphones has quietly become one of the show’s breakout products. TechCrunch got a hands-on, and the device features heavily in their CES summary roundup.
The throughline: while AI dominates the signage, there’s still real demand for tangible tools that make specific tasks easier or more fun.
Wearable note-taking moves to your finger
On the audio side, Vocci joined the growing battle over note-taking rings.
Where last year’s rings from Sandbar and Pebble aimed at personal notes, Vocci is positioning its device as a more direct competitor to dedicated meeting tools like Plaud:
- Records from up to 5 meters away
- Supports 8 hours of continuous recording
- Ships with a charging case for extra battery life
- Expected to cost under $200
- Preorders are planned in the coming weeks, with shipping slated after Q1 2026
The ring sits at the intersection of AI transcription, quantified work and privacy debates — exactly the kind of product CES has become known for.
From solid-state EV batteries to Ford’s AI copilot
Transportation and energy are also getting the AI-and-hardware treatment.
At the Donut Lab booth, Ropek checked out what the Finnish electric mobility startup calls the first solid-state battery for vehicle production.
Key claims from Donut Lab:
- Uses solid rather than liquid electrolytes
- Offers higher energy density, better safety and slower degradation than typical lithium-ion packs
- Can fully charge in around five minutes (actual time will vary by vehicle)
- Long-range version promises up to 600 kilometers on a single charge
- Design eliminates many common causes of battery fires and remains stable in extreme temperatures, improving performance in cold climates
Donut is a subsidiary of Verge Motorcycles. Co-founder and CEO Marko Lehtimaki previously founded several startups, including no-code platform AppGyver, which SAP acquired in 2021.
The new solid-state batteries will debut in Verge’s TS Pro and TS Ultra motorcycles early this year, with other partner vehicles to follow.
On the automotive side, Ford used a CES session titled “Great Minds” to sketch out its software roadmap:
- A new AI assistant will launch first inside Ford’s smartphone app, then expand into vehicles in 2027.
- A next-generation BlueCruise driver-assistance system is in the works, designed to be both cheaper to build and more capable.
- The company’s long-term target: eyes-off driving by 2028, according to TechCrunch senior reporter Sean O’Kane.
Elsewhere at the show, Caterpillar’s CEO talked up the heavy-equipment maker’s growing partnership with Nvidia around AI, Waymo rebranded its Zeekr-built robotaxi, and Roku outlined progress on its Howdy streaming channel.
AI’s business model under the spotlight
CES isn’t just product launches. It’s also where the industry argues about what all this tech means.
At the Variety Entertainment Summit, actor and startup founder Joseph Gordon-Levitt delivered one of the sharpest critiques of current AI business models.
His concern isn’t the core technology, he said, but “the business incentives, driving some of the biggest AI companies,” which he believes are “leading us down a dark path.”
He argued that AI firms shouldn’t get a free pass for the way their models are trained:
- He pointed to large language models built on “everything humans have put their time and energy and labor into.”
- He argued companies should be required to obtain consent and provide compensation for the data and content used to train commercial systems.
Audience members reportedly clapped in agreement at several points.
Gordon-Levitt is currently directing a Netflix thriller about AI, starring Rachel McAdams.
CES 2026: physical AI, but very human concerns
From LG’s CLOid promising to fold your laundry to Donut Lab’s five-minute battery and Vocci’s note-taking ring, CES 2026 has been saturated with AI that literally moves through the world.
But the subtext running through the show is just as important: who benefits from all this automation, who controls the data and how quickly regulators and companies will respond to the ethical and safety questions being raised onstage.
As the last attendees clear out of Las Vegas hotel lobbies, those debates — and the gadgets that trigger them — are already heading back into the real world.
