Technology companies from every corner of the globe gather in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) every January. The trade show, billed by the organisers as “the most powerful tech event in the world”, is often the first place where the latest innovations are showcased to a global audience before breaking through to the mainstream.
From laptops, wearables and the very first smartphone prototypes to preliminary electric vehicles, much of the tech we have now normalized in our everyday lives were first shown at large scale at CES.
Bottom line: having a presence at CES matters for both tech giants and burgeoning enterprises. And, for European startups, the event offers the critical opportunity to share their developments on the world stage.
This year, the spotlight unsurprisingly fell on artificial intelligence and physical AI. Below, we look back at CES 2026 and focus on three AI-powered startups from Europe, and what they brought to the landmark Las Vegas trade show.
.lumen: AI-powered self-driving glasses for the blind
.lumen attracted widespread attention at CES 2026 by winning awards in the CTA Foundation Pitch Competition for Accessibility, and being named a CES Innovation Award Honoree.
The Romanian deep-tech startup produces wearable glasses for the blind and visually impaired. These “self-driving glasses” use real-time computer vision, spatial perception and AI that does not require constant internet connection or pre-mapped environments to help its wearers navigate foreign environments. In fact, the technology uses .lumen’s parented haptic feedback to enhance accuracy and accessibility.
This inclusive innovation showcases the very best of what AI can offer to improve human lives, applying powerful algorithms to solve accessibility challenges.
Reflecting on just how much CES has helped the startup progress, .lumen CEO Cornel Amariei commented: “Two years ago, we went to CES Las Vegas for the first time. It changed us forever and how we think about technology, courage, and global impact.”
Multiverse Computing: Quantum processing reduces AI’s environmental footprint
With headquarters in San Sebastian, Spain, Multiverse Computing aims to tackle one of the biggest criticisms levelled at AI solutions: that the technology behind LLMs is not environmentally sustainable.
The startup’s flagship product, CompactifAI, offers users a platform that drastically reduces resource requirements of LLMs. Enrique Lizaso, cofounder and CEO of the company, explains the situation succinctly: “Compute costs remain one of the biggest barriers to AI progress.”
By cutting costs and energy consumption, Multiverse provides the background tech that will allow AI-powered rollouts with fewer environmental concerns.
Though the company took a more low-key role at CES this year, it has drawn major strategic investments in the past few months, closing a Series B funding round last year worth €189 million with backing from the Spanish government’s digital transformation fund, SETT.
At the end of last year, Multiverse also announced a partnership with Cerebrium to bring compressed AI to the cloud and move closer to environmentally-sustainable AI deployment.
The startup expanded from the Basque Country to new offices in Madrid in late 2025, and there is no doubt that CES 2026 will have broadened its reach to an international scale.
Yneuro: The French startup that promises your brain as your password
Just as two-factor authentication has become the norm and traditional passwords are being replaced with biometrics, Yneuro hopes to provide the next step in secure authentication. As Thomas Semah, Yneuro founder and CEO, puts it: “This is what comes after Face ID.”
The company’s Neuro ID product captures an individual’s EEG-based neural signature and turns it into a digital key that is extremely difficult to forge or steal.
The Paris-based startup used CES 2026 to demonstrate how Neuro ID could replace conventional logins to personal electronics. Given that each individual’s brain activity is highly distinctive, the startup’s authentication technology provides a cryptographically secure identifier that enables seamless verification without compromising on privacy.
While traditional biometrics focus on physical characteristics such as fingerprints or the iris, Neuro ID combines AI machine learning with neural patterns to offer a more complex product that places Yneuro at the cutting-edge of personal authentication.
Shaping the future through AI innovation
The momentum for tech breakthroughs in 2026 is already well underway: the next wave of innovation is emerging from the intersection of AI, deep tech, regulation, and real-world impact – a space where European startups are increasingly competitive and influential.
Regardless, European startups often struggle to catch up on funding, standing in sharp contrast to those founded in regions with massive investment ecosystems, such as the U.S. and China.
Europe, nonetheless, continues to emphasize trustworthy, human-centric AI – embodied by companies such as Yneuro, Multiverse Computing and .lumen, and reinforced via regulatory frameworks like EU AI Act.
Read more: The EU AI Act: safeguarding the future or slowing it down?
At the global stage, CES 2026 highlighted that AI is the central focus for innovation, with 2026 being the year when the technology “got physical”, as shown by Yneuro and .lumen products.
As AI has weaved itself into every corner of the tech landscape, innovations such as Multiverse Computing’s Compactif AI will be in increasing demand to improve sustainability and reduce expenses.
CES 2026 was just the start of a great year for tech innovation. Major startup and technology events are just around the corner, such as 4YFN at MWC Barcelona, and SCynergy’s AI & quantum forum in Europe. Let’s see what the rest of the year has in store.
Featured image: Via CES.