Big Investing Takeaways From CES 2026

In this podcast, Motley Fool contributors Travis Hoium, Lou Whiteman, and Rachel Warren discuss:

• Uber and Lucid's big reveal.
• Nvidia's autonomy model.
• Lego's smart blocks.
• Duds at CES.

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A full transcript is below.

This podcast was recorded on Jan. 07, 2026.

Travis Hoium: We're in the middle of CES. What new tech are we excited about? Maybe what are we not so excited about? Motley Fool Money starts now. Welcome to Motley Fool Money. I'm Travis Hoium joined today by Lou Whiteman and Rachel Warren. It's still a little bit slow in the traditional investing world, but we do have CES going on right now. I wanted to talk about a few of the interesting topics. The first one I want to cover, we're going to talk about our duds. I'm pretty excited about that later in the show, so stay tuned for that. But some of the biggest announcements were actually related to autonomous driving. I want to ask you two about one specifically, and that's Uber's reveal with Lucid. We knew that they were working together. Nuro is actually the technology behind Lucid's autonomous vehicle, but this is a Waymo like vehicle, runs on NVIDIA stack. They're actually bringing this to market supposedly in 2026. Lou, is this the blueprint for the future? Are we going to see more companies like this, or is this just a one off that is getting a lot of pub this week?

Lou Whiteman: I think alliances are a big part of the blueprint, so on that level, yes. The nice thing about this Alliance is, look, you have best of breed. Lucid makes excellent vehicles, and also large luggage ready vehicles with 400 plus mile range, so that's a big part of it. Uber, we've talked at length about their just distribution network, so that is best of breed. Nuro is a well regarded player with autonomous, doing a lot of different things. I don't know, though, if this combination really strikes me as wow. Lucid is an expensive automobile. Who knows what? There's markup, but at retail, what they're bringing to the table is what, an $80,000 plus vehicle?

Travis Hoium: Yeah, if you're criticizing Waymo turning a Jaguar into an autonomous vehicle, this is going to be even more expensive.

Lou Whiteman: With a lot less economies of scale, a lot less going on there. You didn't ask this, but can this particular thing work out? For one, we'll see. Having it on the road in 2026 versus having it at scale in 2026 is a different thing. Also, I do think that we need to remain excited about this because there's a ton of CAPEX. There's a ton of high costs. I think the blueprint is probably some version of best of breed, but with more with more thought on the big scale providers, maybe those Detroit companies you love to talk about, but other people just partnering, but not necessarily this alliance as the model for what's to come.

Travis Hoium: What did you think about this one, Rachel? Is this something that at least piqued your interest or not?

Rachel Warren: Yeah, it definitely piqued my interest. I do think it could be interesting to see how this could create some blueprint for a different type of business model, more of a specialized horizontal partnership model rather than the vertical integration we've seen with Waymo, for example. I think it's really interesting to look into how this partnership with Lucid, Nuro, NVIDIA and Uber works because it really divides the expertise of these industry leaders. You've got the Robo taxi, the hardware. That's built on Lucid's Gravity SUV platform. It offers, luxury, long range, up to 450 miles, seating for six. They're handling the manufacturing at their Arizona factory. Then you've got the brain of this partnership. That's Nuro. They're lending their level four Nuro driver software and sensor suite. The computing side, that's NVIDIA. The vehicle runs on NVIDIA's DRIVE AGX Thor platform, which is basically this incredible supercomputer processes massive data from high resolution cameras, lidar and radar in real time. Then finally, you've got the experiential piece, and that's Uber. Of course, Uber provides this massive user base, they're designing this exclusive in cabin interface for this new vehicle, and riders can then one day use the Uber app to summon the vehicle and place an order. On road autonomous testing began in the Bay Area just in December. They're now slating commercial service for late 2026 in the Bay Area. Uber has said they plan to deploy about 20,000 or more these vehicles over the next six years across dozens of global markets. I think it's a really, really interesting and exciting new entrant into the space. Obviously, this partnership was announced months ago, but this is the first time we've seen some proof of concept of what that could look like. I think there's benefits for all of these different players within this broader ecosystem. I'm excited to see where this goes, and as someone that's been very impressed with Waymo and what they've done in this space so far, I think seeing this new partnership model could be a really interesting alternative to that to watch.

Travis Hoium: Lou, Rachel touched on this, but the big change here does seem to be that we're going from these vertically integrated companies. That was always the theory behind Tesla. They're manufacturing the vehicle. They're doing the technology. Then they would potentially have their own app for robotaxis. Waymo did the same thing because they had to build it from scratch. Now we're finally seeing and this typically happens with new technologies and new business models, the vertical integration, you're solving a whole bunch of problems. You got to do them yourself. Now this is Lucid, Nuro, and Uber. But why can't this be General Motors and a company like Mobili or Ford or Volkswagen, where you have way more scale, way more cost efficiencies, way more options for the vehicle itself, too. We have talked about, maybe a six passenger vehicle that can fit a bunch of luggage is great, but also what happens if you only need two seats, 80% of the time like Tesla's theory is with the robotaxi, it seems like if this works, it could be almost replicated with every single OEM. Is that the right way to think about it?

Lou Whiteman: I think it's definitely something to keep in mind as an investor, because I think there are some risks to it. But yes, I think that what this tells us is that whether it's Mobileye, whether it's in NVIDIA, Qualcomm has chips, too, that you can partner with someone, you don't have to be vertically integrated. Here's the weird thing, Travis. We want a minimum standard. I want to know I won't crash. But I don't know if semantics about, but this is better. If you create a system that has good reliability, it's only the engineers and the fanboys who are going to care. But this is technologically superior. All you have to do is get to that critical mass, and you're in the game. Investing billions of dollars to have the perfect system or the slightly better, the 99 the seven nines, instead of five nines as far as 99.999% or whatever, I don't know if that's money well spent for these that are trying to go to them.

Travis Hoium: It's going to be interesting to see if the best strategy in autonomy for automakers was actually just to wait, see who can figure this out. It's possible that that's long term the winning strategy. When we come back, we're going to talk about a company we don't talk about often and it's Lego. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. One of the announcements that caught my eye this week, and this is a CES announcement, but Lego announced that they are introducing smart blocks, smart tags, smart characters. Bringing technology to a very old product. But Rachel, this seems really intriguing. One of their initial launch partners is Disney with some of their Star Wars characters and Star Wars sets that are going to come with a number of these different smart chips, make all kinds of sounds. It almost seems like bringing technology and some of the robotics that we've seen with some of the technica and things like that to simpler blocks. Is that the right way to think about it? Is this the future of Lego?

Rachel Warren: It could be. It's interesting because there have been some sort of iteration of this technology around for a long time, but it's come a long way. This is the first time we've seen Lego really implement this in their products. Lego has positioned this, and this was how they framed their announcement; as the most significant evolution in their products since their 1978 mini figure for those who, follow the Lego lore. This new product uses BrickNet which is basically a proprietary Bluetooth based protocol to allow the Lego bricks to communicate locally with insane, millimeter accuracy. Basically, this creates a digital twin of that physical play in real time. It's a really exciting thing, I think, if you're a kid. It's really an upgrade to this technology. These smart bricks they use a custom made chip sensors, lights, and a speaker, and it creates a really interactive and responsive play experience, but without a screen, which I think is something that's probably very compelling for a lot of parents, too. Your kid is still playing with all these different types of products, but they're also very technologically advanced. I think the idea here is that the Smart brick is going to add a dynamic interactive player traditional screen free Lego play. One of the examples I saw them give was, like, in a Star Wars Lego set. You could have a light saber dual tag that would trigger light saber clashing sounds and light effects as the Minifgures interact, which honestly sounds so cool to me. I would love to do that. So I think this is fun.

Lou Whiteman: Yeah, so I'm going to slightly push back at them. I get the marketing team's excited about this, but the most significant evolution since '78 was probably when they realized that everybody loves Legos and the creators' additions or something and started marketing these $500,000 sets for adults. That was going to be more. I predict that would be more of a revenue driver for Lego than this will be. I'm going to play the old grump here. The stuff is cool. I don't know if kids really care or appreciate it where you're going to drive revenue. This looks neat. I can see French things. I don't blame Lego for doing it. I can see collectors liking it. I can see some consumers. But this feels like just because you can they've always used technology. The Lego botanicals have really cool little plug ins where they glow, basically, where it's just like pieces. They do a lot of this. They're always add ons compliments. I have no problem with them doing this. I would love to own the stock, Lego. If you want to go public just to me, please let's do that.

Travis Hoium: That would be a great IPO to have in 2026.

Rachel Warren: Oh, I would be excited about that.

Lou Whiteman: Yeah, but look, is this really, wow the next evolution of Lego or just a cool add on that's gonna get some buzz? I think I'm closer to the latter than the former.

Travis Hoium: It will be very interesting. Lego is one of those things that I cannot really get my kids excited about, but we do have one of those little trains that comes with an app. That's pretty cool. For three, four, five year olds, that's a pretty cool bringing technology to something like Duplos and Legos. We'll see if this has legs, though. Disney definitely seems to be excited. When we come back, we're going to look at our CES duds, and there are a lot of them. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

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Travis Hoium: Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Now, every year, CES seems to have a theme, and investors often get wrapped up in it early in my days writing for the Motley Fool. It was 3D TVs. This was going to be the future. We were all going to be wearing these wacko glasses at home. Guess what? That didn't happen. The stocks that went up because of that theory did not perform particularly well over a long period of time. What sort of duds have you seen Rachel, where you just look at it on the surface and you go, man, I am really not buying that.

Rachel Warren: Yeah, there were a few. Speaking of smart glasses. So Lenovo, they had a smart glasses concept. It was essentially this non working prototype that has a monochrome display and a camera, but it didn't really offer from what was apparent at the presentation, any really compelling use cases compared to say, you know, the smart glasses that one can purchase for Meta. We know how tough that wearables division has been for Meta, as well.

Travis Hoium: It almost seems like you don't want to be following in Meta's footsteps into the glasses market.

Rachel Warren: Yeah, that's not an area that's necessarily proven profitable, at least not in recent history. There was another one called the Lepro AMI AI soulmate. It was described as an always on 3D AI soulmate. It's essentially a holographic woman inside an eight inch curved screen. A little bit invasive, maybe also just an example of putting AI into products that don't need it. That was a slightly odd one.

Travis Hoium: I've got to ask about that one because this highlights to me, there's a lot of these start-ups that are building stuff with AI. But how much of it is actually things that we're going to use, and how much of it? This is where I get a little 1990s vibes on the Internet. There was a lot of companies that were doing things that just were never actually gonna make money. Then when the crash happened, it was like, Oh, obviously, these were not real business models. This one I look at and I go, man, this is tough, and they're spending a lot of money, trying to make AI into a soul mate.

Rachel Warren: I don't know how many people are going to want to buy this thing. And I think it also goes back to, like, a lot of the comments I was seen coming out of CES was there were all of these different products that had the term AI attached to them, but it wasn't necessarily something that's going to make our lives better as consumers. It's not something the average consumer's asking for. One other one, there were these powered roller blades. The Peak S electric skis, they're designed to simulate skiing on dry land. There was a reporter who tried them, described the experience as a slow, awkward skiing motion across the carpeted floor. Hey I don't want to knock it until I try it. But again, that's one of those examples where I'm thinking, Are we asking for this? Do we need this? I don't know. It was fun to watch. I'll say that.

Lou Whiteman: We got to circle back to the soulmate. Because, look.

Rachel Warren: Yeah, OK sure.

Lou Whiteman: There's a fine line between innovation and dystopia, and that line runs through the marketing department. I don't know. We'll see. Maybe I'll just be a late adapter, too soulmate. I still think there are analog ways to go about that that might be better. I'm going to that. Travis, I'll tell you, I can't beat that in terms of predicting duds. I will say I thought the LG, the Cloyd, Cloudroid which is a home robot. I think that was creepy. If you look at that demo.

Travis Hoium: Out of all of the home robots that we have seen the humanoid robots, that was maybe the creepiest, yes.

Lou Whiteman: We shouldn't get into on this podcast, but it has a weird figure, what should I say, which is just like, what were you I don't know. That was an engineering compromise, I think. Here's the point I want to make, though. It's interesting, going through this to me. You know, so many of the things were just like Rachel said, slap AI on something we already have or Version 2, 3, 4.0 of something that's been tried and failed. Pebble has a new ring. LG is doing another paper thin television that they say can just go on the wall with magnets. We give Apple a ton of flack for not coming up with the next big thing. It makes me wonder, looking at what CES says the next big thing is, maybe we're just on a point of the technological curve where it's hard to come up with with what our current capabilities are, something that really, really moves the needle. Jony Ive and Sam Altman, if they come up with their AI imaginary friend device, whatever Open AI spent billions for, maybe they'll make me look stupid. But I just think maybe my investor takeaway is for Apple. Maybe we're being too hard on them because I don't see anyone else knocking out at the park in terms of the next big thing, either right now.

Travis Hoium: Yeah, I think that is a fair takeaway and it does seem like AI is being slapped on everything. I also have to just wonder, what does that mean for the future of this AI development? Because we're talking about trillions and trillions of dollars worth of value if those GPUs are being rented out to build a soul mate or build a model that's behind a ring or something like that, that people aren't actually going to buy. This is the challenge. There's got to be a business model behind it. Some of these I don't I wonder if there is fundamentally a business model.

As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows the Motley Fool's editorial standards. It is not approved by advertisers, advertisements, or sponsored content, and provided for informational purposes only. See our full advertising disclosure. Please check out our show. For Lou Whiteman, Rachel Warren, Dan Boyd, behind the glass and the entire Motley Fool team, I'm Travis Hoium Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.

Lou Whiteman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Rachel Warren has positions in Apple. Travis Hoium has positions in Mobileye Global, Uber Technologies, and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Apple, Meta Platforms, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Tesla, Uber Technologies, and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool recommends General Motors, Mobileye Global, and Volkswagen Ag and recommends the following options: short February 2026 $9 puts on Mobileye Global. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.