By Fred Lambert
Publication Date: 2026-01-07 18:25:00
CES 2026 in Las Vegas has been dominated by two things: the next generation of AI compute and a sudden explosion of credible humanoid robots.
While Tesla isn’t officially exhibiting on the floor, Elon Musk has been actively monitoring the event from X. His reactions, and lack thereof, to the major announcements give us a fascinating look into how Tesla views the rapidly crowding field of autonomy.
Musk was quick to comment on NVIDIA’s major push into embedded AI for autonomous systems, but he has been noticeably quiet regarding the masterclass put on by Hyundai and Boston Dynamics.
The NVIDIA “Alpamayo” Reaction
NVIDIA came to CES swinging with its new “Alpamayo” platform, essentially positioning itself as the go-to supplier for the “brains” of future autonomous robots and vehicles. It’s a direct shot at the integrated model Tesla is pursuing, where Tesla builds both the robot (car or humanoid) and the AI inference computer running it.
When asked on X if NVIDIA’s move into this space was a threat to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) and robotics efforts, Musk offered a diplomatic, if slightly backhanded, response.
He made a point that has been known for years, but he often forgets when he shares ambitious timelines about Tesla achieving “unsupervised self-driving by the end of the year”: generalized autonomy is incredibly difficult because of the “long tail” of…
