*please note that these are simply personal observations on content featured at CES and do not imply bullishness/neutralness/bearishness on any of the ideas discussed. Please DM me to discuss your opinions! 🤓
1. AI, AI, & more AI, everywhere – Enthusiasm around Artificial Intelligence (AI) showed no signs of abating at CES. Most (all?) content incorporated at least some aspect of AI influenced capability. AI is scaling, first slow and then fast, from perception/predictive and generative, to agentic and physical, soaking up continued advancements in compute power.
2. Autonomy (& Automation) is back! After a few years of sentiment in the doldrums, perhaps most visible on the mobility front save for the fiercest evangelists, automated systems made a strong comeback this year at CES. This was across the board: ADAS to L5, on-road to off-road, industrial, factory, supply chain, etc.
3. Robotics – Signified by numbers 1 & 2, robotics content was heavily featured at CES 2025. If the show is any indication, the robots are coming sooner or later, and there isn’t a whole lot we can do about it. Jensen Huang posited during his keynote that the “ChatGPT moment for general robotics is just around the corner” and if we have the technology to solve agentic, self-driving, humanoid, this will be “the largest technology industry the world has ever seen.”
4. EVs, battery tech, charging(and to a lesser extent, sustainability) took a step back from the limelight this year at CES – they were still there, but one may have been forgiven in the past for assuming they had entered an EV convention when walking onto the show floor. While not completely absent, this content appeared much less heavily featured than the past few years and largely stood in the background to other innovations being showcased. Sustainability messaging was more nuanced than prior years. I won’t be surprised if we were to see this return with a vengeance in the next few years!...
5. Geopolitics & Macroeconomic forces loomed large in the background and played a part in most discussions. Most people seem to be going through a process of adjustment and a sort of awakening to a new reality of the “Trump factor” as well as shifting political and economic tides globally. Underneath layers of uncertainty and apprehension there seems to be a sense of giddy optimism and animal spirits at work.
6. Software/Data-defined everything – Content appeared between steady to a slight uptick relative to prior years. Solutions were featured in concert with innovations in other areas such as AI or Robotics with innovation showcased supporting most other content featured at CES.
7. Enterprise/B2B vs. Consumer/B2C – Enterprise technology is in vogue with companies looking to improve bottom lines through productivity and efficiency solutions, whether on the revenue generation front or the cost side. Macroeconomic and geopolitical forces loomed large in the background and played a part in most conversations.
8. Engagement & Attendance – CES is an extremely large and well attended trade show compared with most others and this year was no different. That said, the show floor to me and others felt more subdued (if you can call 140,000 people, which is the latest ‘official’ estimate I’ve seen, subdued), than in prior years. Numbers aside, the mood felt more relaxed and not quite as much elbowing and cattle-herding.
9. Practical (near-to-medium-term) content over “Visionary” (long-term) – Mirroring ‘general’ market sentiment lately, the distribution of innovation showcased seemed to focus much more heavily on the practical vs. the visionary, with innovations on the left-hand side of the adoption curve showcased versus far out, futuristic ideas of “what could be” on the right hand side of the chart. People want to see value now, not in the future.
I am interested to hear your thoughts and where your experience was similar or different than mine!
- Gian Vergnetti, Partner
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