Signal CES 2026 puts embodied AI and autonomous manufacturing in the spotlight

Summary

At CES 2026 in Las Vegas in early 2026, the dominant theme was AI that has acquired a body. AI that once handled text and images on screens was shown combining with robot bodies to act in the physical world, and the show was widely read as declaring the era of physical AI. A public conversation between NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and Siemens CEO Roland Busch captured the direction of travel. Both identified the factory floor, not home service robots, as the real battlefield for physical AI. They also stressed that autonomous manufacturing, in which machines perceive, judge and optimize on their own, will be central to industrial competitiveness. NVIDIA presented autonomy on the manufacturing floor as a core strategy at the event.