In the shadow of Las Vegas’s neon glow at CES 2026, a cadre of tech titans unveiled the scaffolding for an economy wired with intelligence at its edges. From Nvidia’s Jensen Huang to Qualcomm’s Cristiano Amon, leaders likened the surge in Edge AI and Digital Twins to the steam engine’s grip on 19th-century industry, but with data as the new fuel. “From Jensen Huang (Nvidia) to Cristiano Amon (Qualcomm), a new generation of technology leaders is using Edge AI and Digital Twins to build the intelligent infrastructure of a faster, more human-centered economy,” wrote Phil Kafarakis in Forbes.

Huang, donning his signature leather jacket, took the Fontainebleau stage to declare AI scaling into every domain. He introduced the Rubin platform—a six-chip behemoth now in production—slashing token generation costs to one-tenth of prior systems. “With Rubin, NVIDIA aims to ‘push AI to the next frontier’ while slashing the cost of generating tokens to roughly one-tenth that of the previous platform,” Huang said, per Nvidia’s CES blog. Partnerships with Siemens amplified this, fusing Omniverse simulations with industrial software for factories that operate as “giant robots.”

Amon, meanwhile, doubled down on devices as the battleground. “Whoever has presence on the edge is going to win. The edge is where the humans are,” he told TIME at Davos. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Plus, unveiled at CES, packs 80 TOPS NPUs for Copilot+ PCs, while Dragonwing targets robotics—positioning the chipmaker as the edge’s gladiator.

Decentralizing Power: Cloud to Edge Migration Accelerates

Charts from Kafarakis illustrate the pivot: Moore’s Law’s transistor explosion from 1970 onward compounds with AI workloads shifting from cloud to edge between 2010 and 2024, unlocking resilience akin to factories hugging coal mines. Qualcomm enables this in factories, vehicles, and retail, as Amon leads the charge. Lenovo’s Yuanqing Yang calls devices “intelligent endpoints,” per Forbes.

Huang echoed the historical parallel at CES: “Computing has been fundamentally reshaped… some $10 trillion or so of the last decade of computing is now being modernized.” Open models like Cosmos for robotics and Alpamayo for autonomous driving—powering Mercedes-Benz’s CLA—train in synthetic worlds, bridging virtual to physical. “The ChatGPT moment for physical AI is here—when machines begin to understand, reason and act in the real world,” Huang stated in an Axios report.

Siemens CEO Roland Busch joined Huang onstage, unveiling Digital Twin Composer for the Xcelerator Marketplace by mid-2026. “Industrial AI is no longer a feature; it’s a force that will reshape the next century,” Busch said in Siemens’ CES release. Their pact targets AI-driven factories, starting with Siemens’ Erlangen site.

Twins in Action: Factories Reborn Virtual

PepsiCo’s deployment exemplifies: Digital Twins simulate U.S. facilities, boosting throughput 20%, validating 100% of designs, and cutting Capex 10-15% by spotting 90% of issues virtually, per Siemens. Drug discovery accelerates 50% via Dotmatics integration; autonomous driving via PAVE360; shop floors gain AI via Meta Ray-Ban glasses with Omniverse.

“Generative AI and accelerated computing have ignited a new industrial revolution, transforming digital twins from passive simulations into the active intelligence of the physical world,” Huang remarked in the Siemens release. Nine new Siemens copilots embed smarts across Teamcenter and Opcenter, streamlining from design to operations.

At Davos, Huang urged nations: “Build your own AI, take advantage of your fundamental natural resource, which is your language and culture.” Prompting AI rivals managing people as core skills, closing gaps in emerging markets, as reported by the World Economic Forum.

Leaders Forge the New Industrial Order

AMD’s Lisa Su powers efficient architectures; Microsoft’s Satya Nadella blends cloud-edge with copilots; Google’s Sundar Pichai scales planetary AI—all modern industrialists, per Kafarakis. Amon envisions agents at the center: “In future, the agent will be at the center. It won’t matter where you contact it from—phone or glasses.”

Physical AI footage from Nvidia shows Figure 01 robots assembling Mercedes vehicles in Omniverse twins, slashing factory setup 50% with Siemens and PTC, as noted in X posts by analysts like Naeem Aslam. Digital twin market hits $73 billion by 2027.

Ethics loom large: Unlike steam’s social costs, today’s focus spans sustainability and governance, CES discussions central. “These modern industrialists understand that intelligence embedded everywhere must be guided wisely everywhere,” Kafarakis observed.

Edge Bets Reshape Compute Wars

Qualcomm’s NPU edge in density and power challenges data-center giants. “We are in the gladiator business,” Amon quipped to TIME. Wi-Fi 8 prioritizes 25% lower latency for smart factories; Arduino integration democratizes IoT AI.

Rubin ships to Amazon and Microsoft late 2026; DRIVE Hyperion readies Level 4 robotaxis by 2027. Huang’s CES vision: “Our job is to create the entire stack so that all of you can create incredible applications.” Inference explodes, with neoclouds and power plays like Oklo rising.

This fusion—Edge AI at decision points, Twins mirroring reality—births resilient systems. As Huang told Fink, AI enhances purpose: “In the case of radiologists… that purpose is enhanced and made more productive.” A $10 trillion recompute unleashes gains, human-centered yet machine-powered.