A report on CES 2025: tech giants were mostly absent, Nvidia's keynote was a big event, AI experimentation, supply chains adapting to geopolitics, and more
Steven Sinofsky / Hardcore Software : X: @iancutress X: @iancutress : A number of people this year saying #CES2025 felt less busy. Personally it felt same as usual, except now with a decade of attending, I can avoid the pain points. But the numbers speak for themselves. Only 141k+ official attendees with badges (although more came, just not for
Context & Ripple Effects
CES has long been a broad showcase: CES 2020 coverage characterized the event as a mix of emerging technology categories, while CES 2019 featured a major Google presence. CES 2025 instead concentrated attention on Nvidia as many large tech companies stayed away.
The reported 141,000-plus badge count also marks a very different setting from CES 2022's sharply reduced expected attendance. The story matters less as a demand verdict than as evidence that AI demonstrations and supply-chain concerns are reshaping what draws attention at the show.
First-order effects
- Nvidia gained disproportionate visibility from a keynote that became one of CES 2025's central events, while the absence of many tech giants left less direct competition for attention.
- Exhibitors and attendees focused on AI experimentation alongside supply-chain adjustments, putting near-term emphasis on demonstrable projects and sourcing resilience.
Second-order effects
- Companies using CES to launch or validate products may face a more Nvidia-centered AI narrative, encouraging rivals and partners to differentiate through applications, components, or deployment rather than general AI messaging.
- Supply-chain adaptation becomes a product-planning issue for hardware exhibitors: changes in geopolitical conditions can influence where they source, assemble, and showcase technology.
Third-order effects
- If this mix persists, CES may become less a single venue for major-platform-company announcements and more a marketplace connecting AI infrastructure leaders, device makers, and geographically diversified suppliers.
- The show’s evolution would reflect a broader hardware-industry shift in which AI roadmaps and supply-chain strategy are increasingly inseparable, though one year’s attendance perceptions alone do not establish a lasting decline in relevance.
The trend: CES is becoming a clearer barometer of AI hardware industrialization and geopolitically resilient supply chains, rather than a stage dominated by every major consumer-tech platform.