At CES 2026, Razer unveiled Project AVA, a Grok-powered holographic device that places an animated AI assistant inside a glowing physical cylinder, designed for gaming coaching, brainstorming, and other tasks. AVA displays a 5.5-inch animated avatar within a transparent capsule, with options including Grok personalities, anime characters, and esports equivalents.
The built-in camera and dual microphones allow the AI to monitor the user’s screen and listen to voice commands, providing real-time advice for gaming or work tasks. Razer uses xAI’s Grok as AVA’s main “brain,” but plans to support other AI providers in the future.
Reservations are open at $20 for the U.S. market, with expected delivery by late 2026, while the final price has not yet been announced. AVA represents an interesting approach to bringing an AI partner into physical form, though somewhat ironically it primarily targets gamers, a user group often skeptical of AI technologies.
In Brief: Tech World Highlights
- Anthropic is acquiring up to a million of Google’s TPUv7 AI chips from Broadcom, with the Ironwood chip line increasingly emerging as an alternative to Nvidia.
- xAI released a new upgrade to its creative platform Grok Imagine, with Elon Musk revealing that “another major upgrade” will arrive in three weeks.
- Boston Dynamics and Google DeepMind announced a partnership to integrate the Gemini Robotics AI model into Atlas humanoid robots.
- OpenAI researcher Jerry Tworek revealed he is leaving the company after seven years, during which he contributed to early programming systems and led the AI reasoning team.
- Boris Cherny, creator of the Claude Code tool, published a guide on how he uses this agent-based coding tool, including running up to 15 parallel sessions simultaneously.
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