CES 2026: The year of AI PCs?

(Image credit: Future)

The tech sector started this year with a bang at CES 2026, the annual event that brings together over 140,000 attendees to share the latest innovations in consumer and business technology.

Unsurprisingly, at this year’s event AI was a primary focus – with more details on Nvidia and AMD’s latest hardware, alongside AI PC innovations by brands like Lenovo.

Alongside these headlines, however, we also saw a return to form by companies such as Dell, with the resurrection of the XPS laptop range. What did we learn from CES about what to expect in business hardware over the coming year?

In this episode, Jane and Rory are joined by Mike Moore, deputy editor at TechRadar Pro, to discuss the biggest moments from CES 2026.

Highlights

"AMD is predicting that 2026 is going to be the first year when there's more AI PCs sold than non AI PCs and that's devices with an NPU, which can obviously be used for for all kinds of tasks. But, yeah, it seems that this is the next kind of big highlight and big landmark for device makers especially."

"So it's very interesting that this has been reversed quite so quickly, and they've clearly put a lot of effort and a lot of research and development into building a really striking and professional looking device. The fact that the XPS logo is now on the lid, replacing the Dell logo, is quite telling, they really want to have this front and center as well."

"That was the big theme of Lisa Su's keynote for AMD, saying that we're going to need yotta scale power. Which is numbers beyond most ordinary, everyday understanding, I think it's 10 yotta flops, which definitely is not something I've just made up, but a one followed by 24 zeros. So around 10,000 times the amount of AI compute that we saw a couple of years ago. So by the end of the decade, we need all of this power and infrastructure – where does it all come from? Who's going to be building it? How is it maintained and ensure that it's running correctly? It's the companies like AMD and Nvidia who really want to take a step forward and take responsibility for that."

Footnotes

TOPICS

Rory Bathgate is Features and Multimedia Editor at ITPro, overseeing all in-depth content and case studies. He can also be found co-hosting the ITPro Podcast with Jane McCallion, swapping a keyboard for a microphone to discuss the latest learnings with thought leaders from across the tech sector.

In his free time, Rory enjoys photography, video editing, and good science fiction. After graduating from the University of Kent with a BA in English and American Literature, Rory undertook an MA in Eighteenth-Century Studies at King’s College London. He joined ITPro in 2022 as a graduate, following four years in student journalism. You can contact Rory at rory.bathgate@futurenet.com or on LinkedIn.

Highlights

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