After years of talking to chatbots and tweaking image generators, AI is finally getting a body.
At CES 2026 in Las Vegas, the buzz phrase was not just generative AI, but so‑called physical AI: robots and machines that use artificial intelligence to move, lift, sense and react in the real world. The show floor was packed with hardware that made that shift impossible to ignore.
Think Boston Dynamics’ newly redesigned Atlas humanoid robot striding around, or industrial bots built to move car parts in factories. Even the novelty devices were AI‑infused, right down to AI‑powered ice makers. Elsewhere, robots were catching drones with net guns and dancing in flashy automaker booths.
On TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha and Sean O’Kane unpack what that pivot means for startups, investors and the big platforms that enabled the AI boom in the first place.
Beyond the show floor spectacle, the episode digs into a string of AI‑heavy deals and maneuvers from the week:
- Discord’s rumored IPO, surfacing years after the company walked away from a potential acquisition by Microsoft.
- xAI’s massive 20 billion dollar raise, and the darker side of Grok’s content moderation failures that come with scaling an AI chatbot at that level.
- How Mobileye is muscling into the humanoid robotics race by acquiring Mentee Robotics, extending its expertise beyond autonomous driving into full‑body robots.
- OpenAI’s potential shift toward audio‑first, screenless AI experiences that would move its services even further away from the traditional app model.
Taken together, CES 2026 and the week’s dealmaking point in the same direction: AI is no longer just a software layer hidden behind a web form. From humanoid robots to ice machines, it is becoming physical infrastructure.
Equity’s team uses the chaos of Las Vegas as a backdrop to ask the bigger questions: who benefits from this new generation of embodied AI, who gets left out, and how far consumers are really willing to go in inviting robots into their homes, factories and streets.
