Episode 360 | Autonomy Markets: CES 2026: The Autonomy Narrative Just Changed

This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss CES 2026, Zoox’s performance on the Las Vegas Strip and Uber’s potential long-term autonomy plans. 

Zoox’s performance was one of those hopefully “only in Las Vegas” moments, as the vehicle was seen stopping in the middle of traffic and blocking entrances on a regular basis. Which raises the question; what is Amazon going to do with Zoox? Do they overhaul management, make an acquisition, or simply shut it down and move on? 

While Zoox struggled, NVIDIA introduced their open-source Alpamayo AI models under an Apache 2.0 license to accelerate the development of autonomous vehicles and sell more GPUs. 

Closing out the show, the discussion shifts to hardware and global expansion, contrasting Waymo’s bulky new Ojai vehicle with the well-designed Lucid-Nuro robotaxi.

Episode Chapters

0:00 CES 2026

2:13 Zoox CES Experience 

8:41 NVIDIA’s CES Announcements 

12:45 SAE Level 2

16:59 Waymo Ojai

19:31 Lucid / Nuro Robotaxi

21:29 Does Uber Need to Vertically Integrate Autonomy in the Future?

25:05 Waymo / Uber Relationship

27:37 Tensor Auto 

32:49 Foreign Autonomy Desk

34:35 Disgrace of The Week

38:24 Next Week

Recorded on Friday, January 9, 2026

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