• Several AI companies in the US have published an open letter
• The letter is campaigning for unrestricted open-weight AI
• Meanwhile the US government accuses Moonshot AI of IP theft

Any hopes AI tech reporters may have had about easing quietly into the weekend have been dashed by some of the biggest names in the business sharing an open letter in support of open-weight AI models — while the White House has accused China of 'large scale' theft from US companies in building its open-weight AI.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang got the ball rolling with his first-ever tweet, linking to a statement championing open-weight AI models, those models that can be downloaded, viewed, and edited by anyone. Models like this are essential for making AI "more accessible, adaptable, and widely available" the open letter says.

It's co-signed by a slew of well-known tech and AI companies, including Meta, Microsoft, Perplexity, and IBM. While ChatGPT developer OpenAI — which has had more of a closed-model focus, to date — didn't appear on the original post from Huang, it has now also backed the sentiments.

Essentially, these companies are campaigning for openness in AI to drive innovation and access, while also arguing against 'premature restrictions' by governments. It's no coincidence that the US government led by President Trump has recently tried to take a more prominent role in evaluating AI models and deciding when they should be released.

It's also notable that Anthropic and Google are missing from the list of backers to this open letter. We don't have any official comment yet from these companies, so it's hard to judge the reasoning — Google regularly releases open AI models, after all — but it could be something to do with recent accusations aimed at Moonshot AI in China.

Open and closed

Part of the background to this open letter is that Chinese company Moonshot AI stands accused of distilling Claude's (closed) Fable 5 model in order to build its own (open) Kimi K3. In simple terms, distilling works by asking millions of questions of an AI model, and using the responses as training data.

It's something Moonshot AI has denied, while hyping up the potential of the open-weighted, freely downloadable Kimi K3 AI model, which is being released on Monday — another factor in this open letter coming out now. The US government is calling it IP theft, and has issued some heavy-handed responses.

"We support open-source AI and the innovation it unlocks," US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent posted on X. "But open source is not open season on American IP. When PRC firms conduct covert, industrial-scale distillation attacks that cross the line into IP theft, sanctions and Entity List designations will be on the table."

What Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft, and the other open letter co-signers seem to be doing is trying to get ahead of any potential clampdown by the US government on open-weighted models. While everyone agrees that these AI models are beneficial, it's not clear what the next regulatory steps might be.

However, the open letter is vague and general enough that you can read between the lines in a variety of different ways. It may be intended to allude to the Moonshot AI case, or it may not. What's clear is that we're coming to a crunch point for AI regulation and innovation across the globe, and everyone has a perspective.

• Nvidia's Olympus core architecture prioritizes single-thread IPC over frequency, using a 10-wide decode front end, deep out-of-order mid-core, and a graph prefetcher tuned for agentic AI's branch-heavy, pointer-heavy workloads
• Vera trades chiplet-style core density for a monolithic 88-core die and single-NUMA-per-socket design, a deliberate bet on agentic AI workloads that Nvidia's own engineers admit comes at the expense of legacy workload performance
• Self-reported SPEC CPU 2026 results by Nvidia paint a per-core advantage figure of anywhere between 70% and 80% versus AMD's EPYC 9755 server CPU

Nvidia's Vera CPU has a lot to prove, representing the company's first real attempt at the AI server CPU market, where traditional vendors Intel and AMD, along with third-party Arm-based providers, are all gunning for a piece of an increasingly lucrative data center pie.

To that end, Nvidia has published its most detailed technical account yet of the chip, promising substantial performance gains over the competition. Vera is the company's first server processor built around a fully in-house core design, a departure from the stock Arm cores that powered its Grace predecessor.

As Vera heads toward general availability in the second half of 2026, Nvidia is making its case on a specific front: not raw core count, but sustained per-core performance under load, the metric it argues matters most for agentic AI.

What's actually under the hood of Nvidia's Vera CPU?

At the core of every Vera CPU is Olympus, Nvidia's first custom server core, built to the Armv9.2 instruction set but designed in-house rather than derived from Arm's stock Neoverse designs, as its predecessor, Grace, was.

Nvidia's second-generation data center CPU is a completely reworked design built around a single goal: to lead in agentic workload performance.

Rather than following Intel and AMD down the chiplet route, Nvidia packs all 88 cores (176 threads) onto a single monolithic die, with a dual-socket configuration delivering 176 cores and 352 threads in one system.

Nvidia has detailed the core design extensively, and several publications have since dug into the microarchitecture. The front end runs a 10-wide decode engine paired with a neural branch predictor that can resolve up to two taken branches per cycle, designed to handle the large instruction footprints and irregular control flow of interpreters, compilers, and agent runtimes.

The mid core combines a wide rename-and-allocation engine with a large reorder buffer and dependency-breaking techniques including memory renaming and value prediction.

The execution engine schedules dynamically across integer, vector, floating-point, cryptographic, load, and store resources, while the cache subsystem adds a graph prefetcher targeting the pointer-chasing access patterns that defeat conventional streaming prefetchers.

That design has not gone unanswered. AMD has countered with estimated figures for its 256-core Zen 6 "Venice" part, claiming a 3.3x rack-level advantage over Vera, though those numbers are extrapolated rather than measured.

AMD responding first isn't surprising. Within x86, it continues taking ground from Intel, reaching 33.2% of x86 server CPU shipments in Q1 2026 per Mercury Research, up from 27.2% a year prior.

With Arm reporting that its architecture now accounts for roughly 50% of CPU compute among top hyperscalers, competition is building from several directions at once. Vera may well set a new bar for agentic AI.

• A recent report suggests Nvidia has informed its partners of GDDR6 and GDDR7 memory kit price increases
• This means retailers may increase the prices for RTX GPUs using GDDR6 and GDDR7 memory
• The potential price hike and one user's dual-GPU setup both highlight the importance of hardware preservation

The RAM crisis continues to impact PC manufacturers, with rising memory prices and shortages — ultimately leading to increased retail prices for consumers — and the trend may be set to continue with Nvidia.

According to a report on Benchlife, Nvidia is rumored to be planning an increase for prices of its GDDR6 and GDDR7 memory kits for RTX GPUs, and has informed AIB (Add-In Board) partners such as Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte, who make their own versions of Nvidia's GPUs. Unsurprisingly, the price increase for these memory kits is cited as a result of the ongoing RAM crisis.

While RTX GPU price hikes aren't guaranteed for consumers, because this will directly impact AIB partners who manufacture the GPUs, eventual retailer price increases are unfortunately likely. It's a trend we've seen with recent PC hardware.

Notably, Valve's Steam Machine was initially supposed to cost less than its eventual $1,049 / £879 / AU$1,609 price tag, which could now also be at risk of a price increase, based on hints from a Steam Machine engineer (as reported by Bloomberg). New handheld gaming PCs are also now often launching for more than $1,000, and the price of RAM and storage certainly plays a part.

Consumer struggles

The RAM crisis is a sad state of affairs for consumers and underlines the importance of PC hardware preservation. GPUs aren't cheap by any means, especially with recent suggestions that AMD would also be increasing prices of memory kits for its own AIB partners.

We've also recently seen the return of the RTX 3060, due to Nvidia's attempt to help consumers with more options amid a rough PC hardware market. However, if these price hike reports are legitimate, the RTX 3060 will likely be subject to higher prices at retailers.

That's exactly why GPU setups like one Reddit user's RTX 3090 and RTX 3050 dual-GPU rig matter now more than ever. In this case, the RTX 3050 is responsible for allowing frame generation via Lossless Scaling to function.

My dual GPU Setup from r/losslessscaling

A game then utilizes the RTX 3090's power for high-quality visuals and performance, with the two GPUs teaming up. The user states it resulted in 144fps at a 4K resolution over the initial 71fps without frame generation.

Frankly, a dual-GPU setup isn't exactly common, nor is it actually recommended for gaming, since modern games are only designed for single-GPU rendering (even though the frame generation use case is noteworthy).

Users would also need a beefier power supply, depending on the GPUs used, and likely a new motherboard with another compatible PCIe lane.

However, what I feel is more important here is that's it's a great example of why hardware preservation is so important, serving as backup in case GPUs melt or end up faulty, or for experiments like the one I've outlined above. With no end of the RAM crisis in sight, repurposing older hardware might be one way through this.

• Nvidia's Rubin-generation AI servers run coolant that is often hotter than a hot tub as it enters a closed loop at up to 45°C and leaves at around 55°C, with no performance penalty in tow
• The principle leveraged here is that of a temperature gradient with server chips still running hotter than the coolant, allowing heat transfer to occur seamlessly
• The approach allows Nvidia to roughly conserve 2.6 million gallons per megawatt annually to near zero and could save a 50MW site over $4 million a year in cost

Nvidia's Rubin generation is the first of its kind in multiple ways, but the one that sticks out possibly is the fact that it is 100% liquid cooled, implementing it as a core design feature at a platform level with every single chip and networking component covered by a closed loop.

The reference design by Nvidia aims to allow for AI factories that effectively consume zero water by implementing a closed loop circuit that does not leverage evaporative water cooling 99% of the time.

The approach goes a step further by potentially eliminating industrial chiller plants from the equation by using liquid cooling where the temperature is as much as 45 degrees Celsius for coolant entering the system and approximately 55 degrees Celsius while exiting it.

A numbers game for a data center that crunches them at an industrial level

Nvidia's approach is not the first of its kind in terms of thermal design or implementation; however, IBM beat it by 16 years, using 60-degree coolant to cool its prototype supercomputer at ETH Zurich.

The premise was the same: a much lower carbon footprint, significantly lower power consumption, and a loop that is filled once and left alone. What Nvidia adds is scale — its Vera Rubin-based DSX design extends the approach across an entire facility rather than a single machine.

"The NVIDIA DSX reference design for AI factories has zero water consumption — we have eliminated massive amounts of power usage and pretty much all water usage," said Ali Heydari, Nvidia's director of data center cooling and infrastructure.

The coolant is a 3:1 water-to-propylene-glycol mix, and it pulls heat away from chips running far hotter than the coolant itself with ease.

The savings are not only water-based: industrial chiller plants cut their energy costs by roughly 4% for every degree they raise their operating temperature, and Nvidia estimates that a 50-megawatt hyperscale facility could save over $4 million annually in cooling-related energy and water costs by adopting its design.

With cooling historically accounting for as much as 40% of a data center's total power bill, Nvidia's approach is ambitious, but it is one that should pay for itself quickly — eliminating server fans altogether while allowing chillers to run only where necessary, and at considerably lower power than a loop demanding colder coolant.

It must be noted that DSX is a reference design: a set of best practices for building an AI factory, not a census of what the industry has actually built, where many designs still consume very large amounts of water even as AI data centers continue to pop up in drought-affected regions of the US.

Nvidia might seem to be championing a "greener" AI data center for the future, at least in its own designs, but that is only part of the story — and the part it leaves out is a little less flattering. Nvidia did not adopt hot-water cooling because it is elegant, or green, or clever, though it is all three. It adopted it because its accelerators became so power-dense that moving air across them was no longer physically viable, and once you are committed to liquid cooling, running it hot is simply the efficient way to do it.

The sustainability win is real, and it is a consequence of a thermal problem Nvidia created for itself by building the most power-dense chips in the industry. Hot water isn't the trick. It's the bill coming due, paid in the most efficient currency available.

Intel is one of the most ubiquitous companies in the world, let alone the technology industry, with its technologies powering many of the computers most people have used for generations. Central to its success was a philosophy from its former CEO Andy Grove, who was a part of the company from day one and ran it from 1987 to 1998.

Inside Intel

Andy Grove was setting out the foundational theme for his management book 'Only the Paranoid Survive', which he wrote toward the latter years as CEO of Intel.

Grove, who is widely recognised as one of the most successful tech executives of the late 20th century, advocated strongly for putting paranoia at the heart of business. Worrying about various risks that can affect your business — from new competitors to macroeconomic shocks — means you can prepare for them.

But what's worse, as he described it, are 'strategic inflection points' that signal a massive shift in fundamentals that could either lead to staggering growth or a grave decline by an order of magnitude. It's fair to say, in the years since he left Intel, that the company has endured its ups and downs, putting it mildly.

Sliding doors

Although Intel enjoyed incredible success in the 20th century and into the early 2000s, the company stuttered in recent years with rival chipmakers including Nvidia and AMD gaining ground and eating into its market share.

Ironically, from the outside, it appears that the company had succumbed to the sort of complacency that its former CEO had been warning against.

That said, the company is in the midst of a remarkable comeback under the leadership of new CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who has overseen a dramatic surge in the company's stock price that underlines its improved overall outlook as well as new ventures to support the AI buildout.

• Nvidia donates one of its most advanced AI supercomputers to US military’s flagship graduate university
• The supercomputer will be used across a range of applications, from simulations and digital twins, to weather prediction and cybersecurity
• "AI ‌will ⁠be a backbone of America’s defense," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said at the commissioning of the supercomputer

Nvidia has donated a DGX GB300 AI supercomputer to the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, to support students, researchers and faculty in weather prediction, cybersecurity, disaster resilience and response planning.

The supercomputer was commissioned with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in attendance. “Our nation depends on our men and women who fight on the front lines,” Huang said.

“Nothing is more valuable to you than information and insight, and information and insight in a timely way, and to understand its impact and consequence. I can’t imagine anything more important.”

AI supercomputer to be used for training, oceanic modelling, and digital twins

The Nvidia DGX GB300 is one of Nvidia’s most powerful AI servers, and houses 72 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra GPUs, alongside 36 Nvidia Grace CPUs, that provide 20 TB in GPU Memory at a bandwidth speed of up to 576 TB/s.

This will provide the US military’s flagship graduate university with an enhanced ability to train new AI leaders, and enables more technical applications across in-house foundational models, run simulations, and use digital twins to train students from every branch of the military on real-world navigation and decision-making.

“Leadership is about being in service of something else. You’re in service of your team. You’re in service of your country. You’re in service of your mission,” Huang said at the commissioning. “And all of this technology is just tools to help you.”

Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of the US Pacific Command, said, “As we modernize our technology, we must also modernize how we educate our leaders. Access to advanced computing capability means NPS students and faculty understand the opportunities and responsibilities that come with these technologies.”

The AI supercomputer will also allow students to better understand sea conditions and predict atmospheric changes, while also equipping students for an increasingly AI-enhanced military.

The US and China are in heavy competition to deploy better and better frontier AI models, with China quickly catching up despite widespread sanctions on the sale of AI chips to the country. Both nations are integrating AI systems into the military, police, and government agencies.

“Many of you will command in AI-enabled environments. Information will move at lightning speeds, compressing response times,” Paparo said. “Our advantage will come from leaders, like you, who can use the technology to see, understand, decide and act faster while exercising the judgment, experience and leadership that machines cannot provide. That education is happening here at NPS.”

• Nvidia again showed off DLSS 5 at its Siggraph 2026 keynote
• Team Green made it clear that developers will have a level of control, with a choice of three different AI models
• There will be two sliders to play with, and masks to keep DLSS 5 from interfering with game assets where it's not wanted – but many gamers think devs should have much more control than this

Nvidia has given us another showing of DLSS 5, the incoming tech for its GeForce GPUs which received a very stormy reception when first revealed at GTC 2026 – and unsurprisingly, changes have been made in the past few months.

Tom's Hardware reports that Nvidia revealed more about how DLSS 5 will be implemented at Siggraph 2026 over in Los Angeles, where the tech was the foremost topic in Team Green's keynote.

Nvidia was keen to point out how it has changed the neural rendering model in some key ways since DLSS 5 was first announced. Of course, it's obvious that a lot of this is about combating the idea that the tech is 'AI slop' which makes games look worse rather than better, and characters (particularly faces) look bad and have that undesirable 'uncanny valley' effect. And indeed the criticism that DLSS 5 is messing with the art direction and overall feel of a game's graphics.

On the latter point, back at the original reveal, Nvidia stressed that it would give game developers control over the end result with DLSS 5, and now we're seeing how this will work. Team Green has brought in three different AI models which offer varying levels of detail (and impact on performance), so devs can choose between three different filters, essentially.

This isn't a game-wide choice, though, as the developer can apply any of those models to any different scene, mixing and matching as needed. There are also two sliders to adjust the 'structure' and 'tone' intensity of the effects.

On top of that, the developer can mask off any game asset where they don't want DLSS 5 to be applied. That's good news as it means that, for example, character's heads (and faces) could be marked as out-of-bounds, and therefore not subject to Nvidia's tech. The developer could just get DLSS 5 to enhance background objects and details, and maybe only in a relatively minor way (by toning down those intensity sliders).

To clarify, DLSS 5 is essentially an AI filter that sits atop the existing DLSS suite of technology. Underneath that, you still have upscaling (and frame generation), and Nvidia applies what's essentially a photorealism filter on top of that in the form of this new neural rendering model.

If you want to grab some popcorn, Nvidia's full Siggraph presentation is available to watch on YouTube, check it out below. All the DLSS 5 stuff is at the start (well, past the usual preamble).

Analysis: a step forward, but the doubters remain

Has Nvidia managed to placate the DLSS 5 haters, then? No, in a word. Did you really think it would?

As one Redditor put it: "I had so much hope for DLSS in the early days, what a dumpster fire it's turned into."

Another observed: "So just confirming what anyone with a basic understanding of AI already knew. Glorified Instagram filter."

To be fair, in general the reaction has been somewhat more positive compared to the original reveal, and clearly it's a good thing that game developers can at least keep 'yassified' faces out of the mix with characters. Clearly, there is a level of control here, but despite Nvidia treading more carefully in this respect, there's still a feeling that it isn't doing enough.

A choice of three AI models and a pair of intensity sliders is relatively limited, really, and a far cry from anything like a full level of control over how DLSS 5 imposes itself on a game. Although admittedly there's still some way to go before DLSS 5 comes out – it'll supposedly arrive later this year, in the fall (so theoretically any time from September through to November) – and Nvidia could put in additional controls before the launch.

Aside from disappointment around the level of control Nvidia is giving devs, the other beef being raised is how much of a performance hit this AI filter might be burdened with. When Nvidia first demoed DLSS 5, it was running on a pair of RTX 5090 graphics cards, and in this more recent outing, there's no mention of the hardware involved.

It's fairly easy to guess that the GPU demands haven't been meaningfully reduced yet, otherwise Nvidia would likely be shouting about that – and this is being read as a worry by some. I get where they're coming from, although Nvidia has clarified that the tech will run on a single graphics card (it'll have to, of course), adding at Siggraph that DLSS 5 is "VRAM efficient" (a nicely vague assertion).

I'd expect it probably won't run on anything less than an RTX 5080 to begin with, or indeed an RTX 5090. And the other fear is that the initial incarnation could be quite rough in terms of artifacts and the like, and that's a danger with the first take on any tech. Just look at the original DLSS (version 1), which suffered from blurriness and glitches, before they were polished out and it became a seriously impressive upscaler. Perhaps the same will be true of DLSS 5, but there's a long road ahead yet, and notably, a lot more doubts and question marks here.

• 13,750 Vera CPUs and 27,500 Rubin GPUs will drive compute at the Nvidia Vera Rubin AI factory
• The project will be the world’s first national AI infrastructure for physical AI
• By partnering with Noetra Corp, Nvidia is providing hardware to drive Japan’s FRONTia Project

Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) is supporting a partnership between Noetra Corp and Nvidia to provide the foundation for the its national artificial intelligence initiative, the FRONTia Project.

Noetra Corp – which comprises NEC, Sony, Honda, SoftBank Corp, and has backing from 44 other companies and organizations – won a tender on June 30 2026 to run FRONTia until 2030, with as much as ¥1 trillion (around $6.1 billion) expected to be invested in the project over the five years.

Japan sees FRONTia as providing the heart of its sovereign AI ecosystem for industry, providing compute power for the development of advanced multimodal foundation models that can be used to drive physical AI. Robotics across industry and healthcare can potentially benefit from this, along with the development of superior AI agents and digital twins.

What is the FRONTia Project?

Aiming to foster collaboration between global technology leaders and Japan’s manufacturing expertise, and leveraging real-world industrial data, the FRONTia Project (referring to the “Development of Multimodal Foundation Models with a View to AI Robotics and Physical AI” project) is described as “the core of the country’s physical AI ecosystem,” by Ryosei Akazawa, Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry.

“By fostering collaboration between Japan and leading global innovators — including NVIDIA — and leveraging Japan’s strengths, such as its onsite expertise and manufacturing technology infrastructure, we will build highly reliable multimodal foundation models and contribute to solving global social challenges.”

When constructed, the Nvidia Vera Rubin AI facility will provide Noetra’s multimodal foundation models to domestic model developers and enterprises. Nvidia’s own AI-related software models and libraries will also be available.

There has been some criticism of the FRONTia Project, however. Concerned parties have highlighted the lack of financial transparency from Noetra and the Japanese government, as well as the presence of Nvidia as partners, with the US company seen as a strategic rival. Meanwhile the massive energy costs associated with AI installations is once again considered an unnecessary problem to create.

“Japan invented modern manufacturing. Now, it is building the AI factories that will power the next industrial revolution,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia.

“NVIDIA is honored to partner with Japan and its industrial leaders to build the AI infrastructure that will power the country’s industries, its economy and a new generation of innovation.”

Is the world ready for physical AI?

AI’s impact on creative industries has been widely discussed, but its potential for beyond “generative” processes – such as in the physical space – have avoided scrutiny. To date, physical AI (the integration of AI with physical hardware such as robots, vehicles, or industrial machines) hasn’t been able to scale as quickly as generative AIs with ever-deepening LLMs.

Predicting the next word is a lot easier than, say, predicting shifting terrain for an autonomous machine, and without the delicate motor skills of a human, no process can be completely automated.

This is a problem for physical AI, and investing money in developing solutions such as the NVIDIA Vera Rubin AI factory will surely have a direct impact on the workforce. A successful physical AI project means more automation from robots, and fewer physical jobs.

• Nvidia's RTX 5000 Super models are being readied, and board makers have the chips, a new rumor reckons
• However, these graphics cards are 'on hold' due to the high price of VRAM
• The Super refreshes pack a lot of VRAM, and so that cost could have an unfortunate impact on MSRPs – and none of this sounds particularly comforting for would-be buyers

Nvidia's RTX 5000 Super refreshes are apparently being readied, but they're on hold for now – and the reason why makes me even more nervous about the pricing of these GPUs when (well, if) they finally emerge.

Of course, these RTX Super models are still rumors – albeit so persistent at this point, there must be at least some validity to them – and the latest assertion comes from VideoCardz.

The tech site has apparently spoken to a source at one of Nvidia's board-making partners who claims that their company has already received 'graphics cards', which presumably refers to GPU chips (which is what Nvidia supplies, along with VRAM, to partners that make the boards).

At any rate, while this board maker supposedly has at least some of the necessary chips, it has been told by Nvidia that the RTX 5000 Super refreshes are now 'on hold'.

Why? Apparently, the delay is down to the price of the video RAM, specifically the new 3GB GDDR7 modules that are required (as per previous rumors) for the refreshed graphics cards.

Compared to the 2GB GDDR7 modules currently in use with Nvidia RTX 5000 models, the 3GB memory chips are around three times more expensive right now. Ouch.

Analysis: Super stumble?

This presents an obvious stumbling block because, due to these Super variants being packed with VRAM, the total cost of materials gets expensive quite quickly.

Remember that the grapevine believes that the RTX 5080 Super and RTX 5070 Ti Super will bristle with 24GB of VRAM, and even the RTX 5070 Super will have a weighty 18GB on board. Gamers are going to love the latter as an upgrade to the lean 12GB of the vanilla version – but not if it pushes the price of the GPU through the roof.

Going by what VideoCardz tells us about pricing in US dollars as the market currently stands, in the case of the RTX 5070 Super, the greater quantity of RAM, and more expensive modules, would mean 18GB costs in the order of $360 (maybe a bit more), versus $120 for the current RTX 5070's 12GB loadout, whacking an extra $240 on the price (or the regional equivalent elsewhere).

These graphics cards were already expected to be pricey, but that kind of additional premium lumped on top, this could make them real wallet-worriers.

The good news for those hoping for new GPUs from Nvidia is that at least these RTX 5000 Super models do seem to be happening. It's just that we may have to wait some time for them yet – although another recent rumor did suggest they were due this year. The latter speculation also theorized that an RTX 5060 Super 12GB model was incoming, but that didn't make a lot of sense, and I note that it isn't mentioned in this latest rumor. As ever, don't go lightly with the seasoning on all this.

• Palit has launched a new RTX 3060 model with 12GB of VRAM
• This continues a recent theme of old GPUs being resurrected
• These GPUs may pack 12GB of video RAM at a relatively affordable price, but they don't make sense compared to current-gen pricing

We might not have seen any new graphics cards so far from Nvidia this year — and no RTX 5000 Super refreshes are in sight (although there are rumors again) — but we're continuing to witness the resurrection of some old GeForce GPUs, with Palit officially revealing a new RTX 3060.

That popular workhorse of a gaming GPU has already made something of a comeback, returning to the shelves of retailers like Newegg as an alternative budget graphics card in a RAM-starved climate where prices of many of these current-gen boards are being hiked up (alongside other PC components, of course).

As flagged by VideoCardz, Palit has trumpeted the launch of its new GeForce RTX 3060 Infinity 2 OC graphics card as "the return of a classic", which is certainly one way of putting it.

Although to be fair, even today, the RTX 3060 remains a very popular GPU, ranking second on the Steam hardware survey for June 2026 (behind only the RTX 4060 laptop GPU in a rather bizarre twist I won't get into here).

Palit observes: "Combining a massive 12GB GDDR6 memory capacity with a clean, all-black dual-fan shroud, the Infinity 2 delivers honest, dependable performance without the premium price tag."

Analysis: let's hope for a Palit-able price tag, but so far, RTX 3060 pricing has been out of whack

The key selling point for these RTX 3060 models is that they're loaded with 12GB of video RAM (VRAM), as Palit emphasizes with this new Infinity 2 OC model. Where this is side-stepping the RAM crisis (to some extent) is that these past-gen Nvidia cards use GDDR6 VRAM, a different memory supply to tap than the GDDR7 used in RTX 5000 graphics cards (except the RTX 5050, which goes with GDDR6, but that's the outlier here).

This means Nvidia can get its partners to produce graphics cards that have 12GB of GDDR6 VRAM (a loadout a good few gamers put a priority on securing), but sit at the cheaper end of the market. Due to cost issues, these days it's a lot less tenable to sell lower-end GPUs which stack up the GDDR7 VRAM (like the RTX 5060 Ti with 16GB).

It's sad that the RAM crisis has forced us to this point, but that's the reality of the GPU world at the moment. What's also problematic for me here is that the RTX 3060 might have 12GB of VRAM at a relatively affordable price point, but looking at current pricing in the US as an example, it's not meaningfully cheaper than the RTX 5060 with 8GB.

Yes, you're getting a lean RAM configuration with the latter current-gen graphics card, but it's still a much faster GPU — one that benefits from DLSS 4, too — and only just over 5% more expensive (at the time of writing). At this kind of price differential, the RTX 3060 12GB doesn't make a lot of sense.

If these RTX 3060 models were a lot cheaper, then there might be more of an argument. To be fair to Palit, we don't have a price tag on this new offering yet, but pricing needs to be a lot more compelling than what I'm seeing right now (especially in the UK, where the RTX 5060 8GB is actually cheaper than the 3060 at some retailers, although there isn't much stock of the latter).

For as long as there's been software there has been tension between open source and closed source. The creator of the Linux kernel, software engineer Linus Torvalds, has long been an outspoken advocate for open source environments – while putting the boot into closed source corporate entities who have tried to exploit the ecosystem.

Open for business

During a Q&A at Aalto University, an attendee complained that the Nvidia Optimus chip – a processor that switches between integrated graphics and dedicated graphics – was no longer being supported on Linux.

That meant that this expensive chip fitted into her Linux laptop was basically useless unless developers worked on a fix by reverse-engineering the process. Torvalds answered by giving Nvidia both barrels – complaining that the company was profiting from the Linux Foundation ecosystem through products like the Tegra chips for Android devices.

At the time, he complained that competitors like Intel and AMD were happy to co-operate with Linux to build native drivers whereas Nvidia would treat its proprietary code as classified material. This exchange culminated with an angry Torvalds flipping Nvidia off to camera.

Turning the tables

The situation today is almost entirely different from that we found nearly 15 years ago. Nvidia has embraced open source with open arms, and has also fully transitioned to open source Linux GPU kernel modules as being the default options as of 2022, pushed under a dual GPL/MIT licence.

With the AI buildout also fully underway, Nvidia has crafted the Linux-based DGX OS for its personal mini supercomputing DGX Spark products. This Ubuntu-based system is designed to work with the entire Nvidia software stack – with this AI layer (including software like CUDA, cuDNN and NCCL) being closed.

Although the battle between open and closed source remains active, Nvidia's reversal signalled that the future of enterprise and AI-centric computing was to be found in open source environments.

• A Reddit user's Zotac GeForce RTX 5090 GPU reportedly exploded during gameplay
• The power connector wasn't damaged, but a visible burn mark was present on the PCB gold finger
• It's yet another point of concern for RTX 5090 users

Nvidia's RTX 5090 has been the subject of controversy ever since its launch, with several well-publicised cases of melting power connectors causing malfunctions — and this time, it's arguably the worst case yet.

As reported by Wccftech, a Reddit user's Zotac RTX 5090 GPU has exploded, 'five minutes' into playing the tutorial for Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced. Interestingly, the 16-pin power connector (often the case of the RTX 5090's woes) wasn't damaged. Instead, the user claims they heard a loud pop and crackle, followed by a cloud of smoke.

The 16-pin power connector has been blamed for several RTX 5090s melting, either due to high temperatures or connectors that aren't properly seated. It also shouldn't be a surprise that these melting complications are effectively exclusive to Nvidia's flagship GPU, since it draws a significant amount of power (575W maximum).

Instead, the PCB gold finger (the part that goes into the motherboard's PCIe slot) on the user's Zotac RTX 5090 has a visible burn mark. The cause isn't exactly clear, but speculation suggests that a crack in the circuit board may have caused the GPU to short-circuit.

Comment from r/pcmasterrace

Comment from r/pcmasterrace

Comment from r/pcmasterrace

Perhaps the most concerning aspect of this case is the suggestion from fellow Reddit users that the supposed crack and short circuit may be the result of GPU sag — and if that's the case, it should be a major concern for high-powered GPU users.

Plenty of modern GPUs, notably from third-party Nvidia partners, are quite chunky, which leaves little clearance to fit in smaller cases and, most importantly, not enough space to use GPU sag brackets.

Fortunately, the RTX 5080, RTX 4080, and RTX 4080 Super (which is the GPU I use) aren't cards that draw nearly as much power as the RTX 5090, so there isn't too much concern in terms of power connectors melting. However, if GPU sag can lead to a short circuit, it raises concern for any GPU that's heavier than most, especially the high-powered RTX 5090, as it's an additional issue to be wary of alongside melting connectors.

A melting or exploding GPU in this current PC hardware market is possibly the worst-case scenario, particularly for RTX 5090 users (who are seemingly most at risk), as prices are completely out of the affordable range due to the ongoing RAM crisis.

Frankly, it makes me want to steer clear of high-wattage GPUs completely (or at least undervolt them). TechRadar has contacted Nvidia for a response.

• The Nvidia Shield TV (2019) is out of stock pretty much everywhere
• Nvidia says it's down to consumer demand for the streaming device
• It's not yet clear if we'll ever get more stock or a replacement gadget

While there hasn't been any new Nvidia Shield TV hardware for seven years now, the streaming devices continue to be popular — but it looks as though it could finally be the end of the road for the cheapest base model in the series.

As spotted by Android Authority, this $149 / £129 / AU$289.95 model is now out of stock via Nvidia's official channels (there does appear to be some stock at Amazon Australia at the time of writing), and Nvidia has stopped short of promising that those stock levels will be replenished anytime soon.

In a statement to Android Authority, Nvidia said the Shield TV was out of stock "due to demand", and that there was nothing to say "regarding future availability at this time" — so make of that what you will.

Nvidia also took the opportunity to highlight that all Shield TV models continue to get software updates and continue to be supported by Nvidia, even though it's now more than a decade since the first of these gadgets went on sale.

More to come?

Both the base model Shield TV and the more premium Shield TV Pro were given a refresh in 2019, and Nvidia says the Pro version is still on sale. Whether or not Nvidia is planning to let the stock run down on that model too remains to be seen.

I've had several Shield TVs down the years, and have always been impressed with the hardware and the software on offer. They support a wide variety of apps and games, come with local storage, and can be customized in a variety of ways too.

Even something like the recently launched Google TV Streamer only just about catches up to everything that's possible with the Shield TV boxes — and that's saying something considering Nvidia's devices made their debut in 2015.

Nvidia execs are on the record as saying they're open to the idea of new Shield TV hardware in the future, so hopefully this clearing out of stock will be followed by a brand new model in the not too distant future.

• A Reddit user's RTX 5090 has partially melted a PCIe riser cable
• Some of the riser cable's material is stuck on the RTX 5090's backplate
• It's not as serious a concern as connector melting issues, but it's worth being cautious about riser cable and GPU spacing henceforth

Building a new gaming PC in 2026 and beyond is a tough ask for any gamer amid the RAM crisis, and that's why this case of caution around hardware components is vital.

As reported by TweakTown, a Reddit user has reported a partially melted Lian Li PCIe riser cable due to heat from direct contact with the Asus TUF GeForce RTX 5090 backplate. The material chipped away from the riser cable is evident on the GPU's backplate, but fortunately it isn't a substantial amount.

Riser cables are an ideal solution for any PC builder aiming for a small case that can fit larger GPUs by placing them in a vertical position. In this case, the user specifically notes that the riser cable was stuck against the GPU's backplate during a routine PC cleanup, suggesting that the GPU's heat melted the riser cable's insulation.

It shouldn't come as a huge surprise that the RTX 5090 is involved in a case of components melting (even if it's very minimal). In case you've missed them, there have been several cases of GPU power cables melting with RTX 5090 GPUs, which stems from the high power draw (575 W).

It's important to note, though, that this can happen with other GPUs across AMD's Radeon and Nvidia's RTX cards, especially those that can get quite toasty under heavy load. However, Team Green's flagship is likely more prone to melting complications, made worse when using cheap riser cables or GPU power connectors.

Rtx 5090 melted riser cable from r/pcmasterrace

Fellow Redditors argue that this isn't a melting issue, as it appears the riser cable has been chipped away instead. Regardless of the exact cause, it's best to use this as an example to proceed with caution when mounting a new GPU.

If using a riser cable is required due to space limitations, users must provide enough clearance for both the GPU and the riser cable to avoid direct contact. It's a great thing that this user caught on to the matter before any real issue arose.

We've reached out to Nvidia to see if it has any comment on this particular case, but haven't received a response yet — but I'm sure the same warning of caution will be shared.

We've seen rare but far worse cases of GPUs melting, and given how expensive it would be to buy new PC hardware, I'd go so far as to suggest users be overly cautious.

Nvidia's RTX 5090 is a uniquely capable GPU - the company's highest-end consumer-grade GPU to date features a whopping 21,760 CUDA cores and 32GB of GDDR7 memory in its cut-down GB202 configuration.

It also happens to be one of the most expensive GPUs retail consumers can buy in 2026, going for as much as two times its stated MSRP of $2,000 for the Founders Edition at launch, leaving many cost-sensitive AI builders turning to older Nvidia GPUs equipped with 24GB of VRAM such as the RTX 4090, 3090Ti and 3090.

As AI models continue to advance in complexity (and memory requirements), a DRAM crisis is making it impossible for many to secure a capable GPU for their local AI needs, even as one option seems largely ignored: Intel's Arc Pro B70.

A mid-range GPU with oodles of VRAM

Most consumers do not consider Intel a GPU maker, associating it instead with consumer- and enterprise-grade CPUs. This is despite the chipmaker offering some of the best value-for-money options in the mid-range segment it currently competes in.

Intel's Arc Pro offerings, however, are unapologetically different; They focus exclusively on professional-grade, or rather, AI-centric workloads while skipping any pretense of catering to gaming consumers, even as they remain capable of running most titles one can throw at them.

The Intel Arc Pro B70 is its highest-end offering and commands a reference price of $950, with most retailers and OEM partners selling SKUs at around $1,000. With 32GB of GDDR6 memory in tow and a price that is effectively a quarter of most RTX 5090 SKUs on sale at the time of writing, it holds its own as a value-centric alternative to Nvidia's Blackwell-based behemoth.

It leverages Intel's BMG-G31 "Big Battlemage" chip that was originally slated to show on its since-canceled Arc B770 GPU, as it aims to address a vacuum in the local AI space that both AMD and Nvidia are not willing to address given their focus on maximizing profits at the highest end of the spectrum with enterprise consumers.

For those interested in looking at setting up 4 of the Arc Pro B70, Puget Systems has gone ahead and done the necessary testing, even drawing a direct comparison with the RTX 5090, which it finds 4-5x faster in decode tasks thanks to a significantly larger amount of memory bandwidth in play (1792 GB/s vs 608 GB/s)

The observations also pointed out a slightly obvious caveat in the comparisons, however: models that require more compute and bandwidth versus memory will lean toward the RTX 5090, which offers a significant advantage even versus multiple Arc Pro B70 GPUs, but those that require a large amount of memory for their parameters would find a B70 configuration a much more cost-efficient play with access to more memory than a corresponding RTX 5090-based offering.

Nvidia's value proposition, however, runs deeper than the silicon itself, and it is where Intel struggles to find a willing buyer, thanks to better software support on various OSes, CUDA-based software stacks that the Arc Pro cannot emulate, and Nvidia-coded libraries that will not function on Intel's hardware.

Intel's own offerings (oneAPI, OpenVINO, and IPEX) are improving but are widely considered to be behind even AMD's ROCm stack, which in turn lags behind Nvidia's ecosystem. Despite this, the Arc Pro B70, as noted above, benefits from the lack of a real high-VRAM alternative and remains available close to its stated MSRP, making it a formidable and scalable alternative to Nvidia's heavyweight GPU.

Remedy Entertainment has hit the nail on the head with making an engaging and addictive sequel to Control, with Control Resonant. Gameplay from the original concept has been taken into Resonant and dialled up to 11, and that's heavily supported by Nvidia's technologies, enhancing the visual experience.

In my two hours playing, it didn't take very long for me to become fully immersed in not only our new protagonist, Dylan, and his incredible maneuvers and special attacks, but most importantly, in this case, the fascinating environments indoors and outdoors — and yes, a lot of this is thanks to the heavy lifting of Nvidia's ray tracing active during the demo.

Simply put, Resonant is an absolutely pleasant sight to the eyes, making every interior and exterior fight encounter blossom for greater immersion. It's a very colorful game, where enemy designs or attacks can shine bright in red (which isn't a surprise since the Hiss is mostly red), and I was blown away by everything on display.

Resonant takes a strong shift away from the third-person action-shooter aspect and dives into third-person fast-paced action-role-playing game (RPG) elements, and while my time with it was short-lived, I can't wait to see how its PC port handles later this year.

Resonant's ray tracing is amazing, but slightly heavy to run

It shouldn't come as a big surprise, but Control Resonant uses Nvidia's ray tracing technology and DLSS Ray Reconstruction, and the former is a huge demand for any RTX GPU.

Using an RTX 5090 at 4K with DLSS 4.5 Performance enabled and ray tracing preset on high, Resonant felt smooth in most playable combat sections of the demo — and while there was no evident frame rate counter, I suspect it was mostly at or above 60 frames per second (fps).

I'm a massive fan of hack-and-slash games like Devil May Cry 5 and the original God of War trilogy, where 60 fps during combat is effectively a must, which Resonant is quite similar to; the point being, I can tell when frame rates dip under 60, and there were certainly a few occurrences where heavier dips below that figure were noticeable.

However, this is an early build of the game, which is bound to be more polished once released, and high ray tracing presets still give the most powerful graphics card on the market a run for its money in any game (including Cyberpunk 2077 and Resident Evil Requiem).

Fortunately, DLSS 4.5 works wonders as usual. Using Performance mode on previous DLSS models wasn't ideal, as ghosting and poor image quality were clear to see. DLSS 4.5's Performance mode, on the other hand, features really sharp image quality that essentially outshines DLSS 4's Quality mode and can be compared to DLSS 4.5's Quality mode.

The downside of DLSS 4.5 is the performance loss (compared to DLSS 4), particularly on RTX 3000 and 2000 series GPUs, but considering how impressive Resonant is visually using ray tracing, it's worth using DLSS 4.5 Performance where possible.

Bear in mind, this demo wasn't using DLSS Frame Generation, and based on early system requirements, Resonant should run great on a wide range of hardware. There will be some systems that can't handle ray tracing or full path tracing, which should be expected, but even without those elements, it's still a very impressive game visually.

There's still plenty left for me to see in Resonant, a sequel that has taken its environments and locations to new levels entirely.

With that being said, I'm anticipating even more highly detailed areas to explore and enjoy using a less powerful but capable RTX 4080 Super for high ray tracing or full path tracing — and I'll certainly be playing when it launches on September 24, 2026, on PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.

• Nvidia's RTX 3060 has returned to retailers, amid the ongoing RAM crisis
• MSI, Gigabyte, and Asus models reportedly started at $339.99, but have seemingly increased
• It's a sign that the current state of the PC hardware market is in complete disarray in terms of shortages and pricing

The PC and console hardware market is in the worst place its arguably ever been, with the RAM crisis leading to high prices on components utilizing memory. That's why the return of a popular GPU is one that doesn't come as a huge surprise.

As reported by Tom's Hardware, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card has returned to retailers, notably on Newegg, with numerous Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte models available.

While Tom's Hardware highlights that prices for these returning GPU models were seen at $339.99 (which is $10 above the MSRP when launched), listings range from at least $416. It's already a big ask at $339 for an old graphics card that doesn't have the same advantages of the current-gen RTX 5060, so the increase won't do it much favors.

It's worth noting that the RTX 3060 has been the most popular GPU on PC, according to Steam's Hardware & Software Survey results, consistently ranking at number one each month for several years. The same trend is evident in May's results, and likely the same for June.

The 12GB GPU is still very much capable of providing solid performance in games at 1080p or 1440p, especially when using DLSS upscaling, and that explains why it's still so popular among Steam users.

However, it's not exactly being received well among consumers. My colleague and PC enthusiast, Matthew Hanson, views the return of the RTX 3060 "like a s**t Frankenstein", and frankly, it's a reasonable observation and one that highlights just how messy the PC hardware market is.

Users on Reddit haven't been shy about highlighting why the GPU's return doesn't make much sense, with one stating: "Even Nvidia enthusiasts would be hard-pressed to get this for $339.99. At that point, just get an RTX 5060.

"The only real benefit to this card is the VRAM, so we all know who this is really for - The AI crowd."

It's not that the RTX 3060 is a bad graphics card, because that's far from the case. However, at the current price the models from MSI and others are available at, it makes little to no sense, since the RTX 5060 is within the same price region, and it has the advantage of Multi-Frame Generation over the RTX 3060.

Regardless, one more option on the market doesn't hurt, especially since it doesn't seem as though its unstable condition will change anytime soon.

OpenAI's custom AI chip isn't just another attempt to loosen Nvidia's grip on AI hardware. It's the clearest sign yet that OpenAI is adopting the same vertically integrated strategy that transformed Apple over the past decade.

When OpenAI and Broadcom recently shared new details about Jalapeño, their custom inference processor, most of the discussion focused on Nvidia. Nvidia currently sits at the center of the AI industry, supplying the graphics processors that power everything from ChatGPT to image generators and coding assistants. Any attempt to reduce that dependence is naturally headline news.

For years, Apple has enjoyed a competitive advantage from making the most important parts of its products in-house. Instead of relying on someone else's processors or designing software around third-party hardware, it designed and built its own hardware and software. Competitors spent years trying to match that integration.

With its new custom inference processor, OpenAI appears to be building more than just an alternative chip. It's developing the same kind of vertically integrated ecosystem that helped transform Apple into one of the world's most valuable companies.

The chip is only part of the plan

When Apple introduced its M-series processors, the company aimed to build Macs that woke instantly and ran cool and quiet. Customers cared that everything simply felt smoother. OpenAI appears to be chasing a similar goal, even if the product is completely different.

Instead of laptops, it wants conversations that arrive faster. Building its own processor gives it another lever to pull that competitors relying entirely on third party hardware simply do not have.

Jalapeño is simply another piece of a much larger puzzle. The processor has been designed for inference rather than training. Training is the expensive process of creating an AI model as opposed to the inference done afterward. Every time someone asks ChatGPT a question, that's inference. Those billions of everyday interactions eventually become just as important as building the model itself because they determine both performance and operating costs.

Designing a processor specifically for those workloads gives OpenAI something that off-the-shelf hardware never fully can. It can begin tailoring the hardware around exactly how its own models think and respond, a more efficient method. And every improvement, whether in power consumption, speed, or networking, saves money and improves the AI experience.

OpenAI has been careful not to oversell the timeline, with broad deployment of the new chip still some way off. This is the beginning of a strategy rather than the final result.

Nvidia's challenge

Nvidia isn't going to panic right now, nor should it. Its processors still power much of today's AI boom. Demand continues to outstrip supply in many areas, and OpenAI itself remains one of its major customers. None of that changes because one new custom processor has appeared on the roadmap. What should catch Nvidia's attention is the pattern beyond OpenAI.

Google has spent years developing Tensor Processing Units. Amazon created Trainium and Inferentia. Microsoft has invested heavily in its own AI chips, as has Meta in custom accelerators for its expanding AI ambitions. OpenAI is now following the same path. Different companies have different technical goals, but they all seem to arrive at the same conclusion: as AI becomes a bigger part of their business, they don't want to depend entirely on someone else's hardware.

Of course, Apple designing its own processors certainly did not destroy Intel overnight. But there was a shift as Apple gained more control over pricing and product direction each time it replaced an external component with one of its own. The same could happen with AI.

Plus, OpenAI said its own AI models helped accelerate parts of the engineering process during chip development. AI is actually helping to make the hardware that will power its future iterations. That feedback loop may become increasingly important as chip design grows more complex. The future of AI may belong to the companies that own as much of the underlying machine as possible, regardless of where the models themselves rank.

If Apple's history is anything to go by, OpenAI is ready to be that company.

• Nvidia’s closed-loop liquid cooling system virtually eliminates water waste
• Direct-to-chip cooling transfers heat more effectively than air
• It enables higher performance-per-watt and higher rack densities

Data centers aren’t without their fair share of criticism – energy-intensive compute raises temperatures and giant campuses consume considerable amounts of air and/or water to keep them running optimally.

Land scarcity and financial incentives have also been pushing new developments closer to high-risk areas, including drought-prone regions, ultimately leading to even higher cooling requirements.

But Nvidia knows this, and it knows traditional air cooling has pretty much reached its limits as AI hardware becomes denser and denser.

Closed-loop cooling virtually eliminates water waste

With cooling now a core part of AI infrastructure design, Nvidia’s latest liquid-cooled AI systems promise higher thresholds to reduce the burden, driving down water and energy consumption as a result.

By running coolant at higher temperatures – 45°C or 113°F, to be specific – it enabled simpler cooling systems and lowers electricity consumption. Nvidia’s concept uses 75% water, 25% glycol as a coolant, noting that it can run about 5-7°C higher than hot tubs.

Compared with traditional evaporative cooling towers, Nvidia’s latest proposition involves a closed-loop system where coolant continuously circulates through servers to remove excess heat from chips. The warm coolant then cycles through external dry coolers leaving virtually no water evaporation.

The company boasted that cooling-related water consumption can be reduced by as much as 100% in suitable climates subject to the occasional extreme day, with cooling towers totally eliminated.

“The Nvidia DSX reference design for AI factories has zero water consumption – we have eliminated massive amounts of power usage and pretty much all water usage,” Data Center Cooling and Infrastructure Director Ali Heydari said.

The system’s efficiency primarily comes from direct-to-chip liquid cooling, where liquid flows directly through cold plates attached to CPUs and GPUs. This captures and expels the heat from exactly where it’s produced.

Not only is this more effective than cooling entire rooms, but liquid also promises to transfer heat thousands of times more effectively than air.

Major improvements across water consumption, energy efficiency and Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) all help on the sustainability front, but there’s another layer to the benefits.

Nvidia says it can increase rack density and performance

Nvidia acknowledged that chip power consumption and rack densities continue to rise, so by implementing liquid cooling data center companies can add more GPUs per rack, use higher rack power and ultimately pack in larger AI clusters within the same building footprint.

The company explained that its Rubin systems now fit inside two racks, instead of six, marking a major space saving.

Simultaneously, air cooling has become ineffective. “Once the watts per chip crossed a certain level, liquid cooling became mandatory,” Motivair’s CEO Richard Whitmore said.

Independent testing totally separate from Nvidia’s latest announcement shows that its H100 systems delivered around 17% higher performance when water cooled, compared with air cooling. Under sustained AI workloads, GPU temperatures fluctuated between 41-50°C when water cooled, and 54-72°C when air cooled.

Besides improving immediate and sustained performance, greater thermal efficiency could also boost longevity.

The new, higher-temperature closed-loop water cooling model is set to be used in upcoming Rubin deployments this year.

• Alibaba's Tongyi Lab unveils the Qwen Robot Suite
• Its first embodied-AI models are split into navigation (RobotNav), a video "world model" (RobotWorld), and manipulation (RobotManip)
• The move comes after Nvidia recently unveiled and published its own Cosmos 3 offerings

As much of its AI competition continues to focus on LLMs and making them faster and more capable, Alibaba might be looking to lead on another frontier altogether, along with its LLM ambitions in tow: robots.

The company's Tongyi Lab has unveiled the Qwen Robot Suite, what it calls a family of models focused on "embodied AI," which centers on enabling machines to perceive space, reason, and act accordingly.

This comes at the heels of Nvidia's own Cosmos 3, a frontier model for physical AI, further bolstering CEO Jensen Huang's narrative that China's developer ecosystem remains relatively unaffected by chip restrictions, even as focus in the West continues to shift to power for many of the sprawling data centers being built in the US.

A competitor or a complement to Nvidia's playbook?

The Qwen-Robot Suite consists of three core models: Qwen-RobotManip, a generalizable vision-language-action model; Qwen-RobotNav, a scalable vision-language navigation model; and Qwen-RobotWorld, a video world model designed for embodied intelligence.

There is no denying, however, that robotics is being treated as perhaps the most crucial frontier for AI, even as LLMs continue to advance, with both Google and Nvidia among the companies pouring billions into research on their respective Gemini Robotics and open source Cosmos offerings.

Alibaba claims that the model, which leverages a more lightweight Qwen3.5-4B model rather than its Qwen 3.7 Max, which features over a trillion parameters, manages to top the RoboChallenge real-robot benchmark, scoring an impressive 59.83 and a 45% task success rate.

With other interested parties such as Tencent, Unitree, AgiBot, UBTech, Galbot, Spirit AI, and GigaAI, in addition to interest from EV firms including Xpeng and Xiaomi, all shaping the future of Chinese AI robotics, R&D in the industry is continuing at full swing, even as upcoming IPOs are expected to further propel the industry forward with easier access to capital.

The South China Morning Post, a wholly owned subsidiary of Alibaba, noted that "Alibaba’s entry comes as embodied intelligence is fast becoming the next frontier in global AI."

Nvidia's position on the matter is perhaps more nuanced with it attempting to behave as an 'enabler' versus a direct competitor as it pushes its open-source model to perhaps form the same building block that CUDA does for GPUs with Cosmos, GR00T, Isaac and similar offerings being the playbook this time around to ensure future robotics platforms are built, much like most AI tools, around Nvidia's hardware and software stack.

Alibaba's announcement might not be a sign of the Chinese giant out-engineering Nvidia, but in the backdrop of the Chinese government insisting informally at least, on a decoupling or at a minimum, no reliance on US-based hardware or software, it can be seen as an intent to build a similar ecosystem for Chinese robotics companies.

In the absence of Nvidia's presence in China, it might be hard to compare the two offerings, even as their scales differ considerably: Cosmos 3 is an open-world foundation model with multiple vendor-reported scores that do not cover RoboChallenge, whereas Alibaba's are self-reported from exactly one benchmark. Until both approaches can be compared directly, one can not assume superiority of one over the other.

What is, however, perhaps painfully obvious for Nvidia, and has been warned of time and again by its CEO, is that China, irked by US policies around AI, is no longer looking for chips, models, or even open source solutions to incorporate into its ecosystem, but wishes to build them from the ground up.

This could result in a lack of exposure to what was the second most lucrative market for the chip designer, a move that could cost it billions of dollars in revenue in the robotics segment alone, from what is still widely considered the "factory of the world" due to its huge manufacturing base.

• PUBG's Ally Duo mode is now in testing on Steam
• Nvidia's ACE tech is powering the AI teammates in this mode
• You can play with an AI teammate against other human + AI duos until the end of June

PUBG Battlegrounds now offers the option to play with an AI teammate — powered by Nvidia — in a new mode which is available to try in beta for the next two weeks.

As VideoCardz noticed, the Ally Duo Mode is now available through PUBG Arcade, and represents Krafton and Nvidia teaming up to use Team Green's ACE technology — as aired back at the start of the year — to create an AI teammate called Ella.

PUBG Ally was in testing early in 2026 and has now reached the point where it's ready for public consumption — at least as a beta, where the mode will be playable through to the end of June on Steam.

This is an opportunity to "collect invaluable real-world player feedback, to guide the future of AI agents in games," Nvidia tells us.

How does Ella work exactly? The best way to find out is to watch the demo in the YouTube video below.

As you can see, the idea is that you have an AI teammate you can talk to, and more to the point, give orders, or ask for help, using natural spoken language (or typed text if you prefer), with responses from the AI designed to be suitably 'human' in feeling and tone.

At least that's the idea here, but watching the brief demo leaves me with a lot of doubts about what "represents a new generation of AI game characters designed for deeper immersion" according to Nvidia.

Analysis: reaping what was sown a long time ago

It should be no surprise that Nvidia is dressing this up in a lot of fancy talk. Last year when it introduced the concept, Team Green talked about revolutionary Co-Playable Characters or CPCs, as opposed to boring old NPCs. Of course, as my colleague on TechRadar Christian Guyton noted at the time, these are just glorified bots – and we've had bots for ages (PUBG has, too).

In fact, I was deathmatching bots some 30 years ago in Quake, when the Reaper Bot mod arrived. (The Reaper was a horrifically accurate CPU-controlled creation — positively lethal if it got hold of the lightning gun – but overall it had the strategic skills and gaming savvy of a house brick, and was easily trounced by a reasonably good player, but hey, these were very early days here.)

So, this isn't a revolutionary idea, or the next step on from NPCs, or whatever accolades relating to gaming greatness that Nvidia might want to heap on PUBG Ally. However, there is more to Ella than this, in fairness to Team Green. One half of Ella is the bot intelligence to actually play the shooter well enough (hopefully), but the other side is the AI models — the Nvidia ACE trimmings.

These are small language models (SLMs requiring an Nvidia GPU with at least 8GB of video RAM) driving the AI companion's "realistic" decision-making processes, and facilitating communication via speech models. Ella is "equipped with the ability to understand and respond to game situations in a human-like manner" over and above your typical game bot, but I'm not convinced from the demo.

Ella feels painfully artificial — not human — and borderline sycophantic in the game footage shared by Nvidia. OK, so this is still early testing, but I'm not getting any real 'revolutionary' vibes about the gaming skills or chat on show here.

Maybe we'll get selectable personalities eventually — and even true-to-life gaming types. For realism there definitely needs to be an occasional AI teammate who throws a massive hissy fit about how rubbish you are before abruptly quitting, surely?

The general reaction to the emergence of PUBG Ally has been as you might expect: some gamers are curious, while others are mystified or even scathing, and there are more in the latter camp. Some are convinced this will be highly amusing: "I look forward to the comedy that this feature will produce." While others on the same Reddit thread are already trash-talking the AI's ability to play.

I'm not surprised at the feedback thus far given the way Ella has been realized by Nvidia, and the AI being overly chatty hasn't gone down well either. Players engaged in a competitive game don't want flowery chat putting them off their flow, and maybe obscuring important sound effects that are clues as to where the enemy might be and so forth.

The whole thing leaves me rather cold at this stage, frankly, but among more casual gamers — or those who don't have friends to play with at the time, and don't want to hang around in lobbies, or be exposed to toxicity in pick-ups — Nvidia's AI teammate may yet find a place.

As long as the gamer in question owns a decently beefy Nvidia graphics card, that is, and another concern of mine is how much of the GPU's resources are these AI models demanding? Presumably not a lot —they are 'small' by nature — but gamers are notoriously unhappy about anything running interference with their FPS, no matter how slight.

• Nvidia is pitching its upcoming Vera CPUs to Chinese clients while advertising availability soon
• Move into data center CPUs pits Nvidia against traditional rivals Intel and AMD, which currently control the bulk of the market in China and other regions
• Nvidia's move comes at a time when the Chinese government continues to advocate for home-grown chip solutions, and the US's chip controls have effectively reduced its share to 0% of a lucrative Chinese data center market

Nvidia is apparently pushing to win Chinese customers for what its CEO regards as the next multi-billion dollar frontier for the company: data center CPUs.

The firm has spent the past two years watching the 2nd-most important chip market in the world effectively cut it out with a mix of consumer-grade chips and homegrown solutions such as Huawei's Ascend offerings, backed by a Chinese government push for self-reliance.

While Chinese officials have held the line with soft barriers - no official restrictions on Nvidia's chip exports to China exist in the mainland - Nvidia is seemingly betting on a reset in relations when it comes to its Vera CPUs for the data center.

Why CPUs and why now for Nvidia?

Nvidia's Vera CPU is more than just another competitor in the market. It threatens to upend the existing status quo, with Intel and AMD chips dominating the market, by adopting an AI-first approach to its design.

Nvidia is presenting Vera as a CPU that is up to 1.8 times faster than current x86 CPUs from Intel and AMD in certain workloads, offers 4 times the memory bandwidth, and delivers up to a 50% increase in performance versus traditional rack-scale CPUs.

According to a Reuters report, at least one major unnamed Chinese cloud company intends to purchase 300 servers, each containing 2 Vera CPUs. The CPUs themselves are estimated to cost upwards of $20,000 before bulk discounts kick in.

However, whether this results in an order remains to be seen. Chinese regulators seem to be making a stronger push for self-sufficiency in their chip sector, prompting many of their AI startups and giants alike to opt for local chip options, such as Huawei's Ascend and T-Head's Hanguang.

Nvidia's salvation however, might come from an unexpected place, as battle lines might be different this time around: the same AI export controls that crushed its Chinese business might work in its favor now.

Not only are CPUs considerably less regulated by US export rules, but the Chinese market is also reeling from a squeeze on server CPUs, with Intel pushing delivery lead times to as much as 6 months in some cases, even as AMD noted that the CPU market remains tight, with demand outstripping supply.

If Nvidia can navigate past the politics and the incumbent x86 architecture's software advantage, as well as the ecosystem built around it, it might carve out an important piece of the lucrative Chinese data center market, even without the CUDA 'stickiness' that makes its GPUs so sought-after in this segment.

Whether that is enough to overturn the obvious advantage that both well-placed chipmakers (Intel and AMD) have in terms of an ecosystem, as well as the edge the domestic champion, Huawei, enjoys in terms of government-level backing, however, remains to be seen.

• Rumor has it that Intel's CPU with integrated Nvidia RTX GPU is planned to debut early in 2028
• We could see an announcement at CES 2028
• This will be a powerful mobile chip that could be a huge step forward for gaming laptops and handheld devices

Intel processors with integrated Nvidia RTX graphics are coming, we know that, but we now have a rumor of a rough timeframe, namely early 2028.

VideoCardz reports that according to YouTube tech reporter Erdi Ozuag on X, Intel's silicon roadmap currently has its processors featuring built-in Nvidia GPUs as launching in the first quarter of 2028.

In theory, then – assuming this is true, and the planned timeline doesn't slip – we could be looking at a CES 2028 launch for these chips which are codenamed Serpent Lake.

Also regarding the timeline, it aligns with the expectations for the release of Nvidia's next-gen of GeForce RTX GPUs, which is currently forecast to debut in 2028.

Ozuag adds that the prospect of Intel producing Apple silicon continues to advance, and the final quarter of 2027 is apparently the target for Team Blue to be making chips for MacBooks or iPhones (probably lower-end models, the rumor mill has previously suggested). This (theoretically) represents Apple diversifying somewhat away from TSMC for chip production duties.

Analysis: a lot of potential – but some questions too

An Intel processor with Nvidia RTX chiplet on-board to provide graphics muscle should be a huge move for the PC world. Granted, we know very little about the chip as it stands, but packing next-gen RTX graphics is likely to mean this could usher in SoCs which are revolutionary for the performance of thin-and-light gaming laptops. Indeed, these Intel processors should prove excellent for elevating gaming handhelds too.

If this rumor is true, it means these Intel chips are potentially only a year and a half away. Or at least that's when we could first see the silicon announced, although the notebooks packing the chips themselves may take a fair bit longer to arrive on shelves.

Of course, a lot of how this timeline plays out may be heavily dependent on what happens with the current RAM and component crisis, and its impact on the world of laptops in general. (Which could get substantially nastier as time rolls on – as I've discussed elsewhere recently, I think now could be a smart time to buy a laptop based on the indicators we're hearing from various key players in the PC sphere – and indeed phones for that matter).

Other questions remain, such as: where does this leave Intel's own Arc graphics plans? And how will this partnership play out given that Nvidia is now spearheading a fresh thrust to make Arm devices more relevant in the realm of Windows 11 laptops with its RTX Spark chip – a prospect that'll surely worry Intel (despite the brave face in public)?

There are a few unknowns as to how all this will unfold, let's put it that way, but this Intel and Nvidia collaboration still remains an exciting prospect.

• Gartner study suggests AI data center power requirements will grow by 26% in 2026
• This is a 13% increase over an earlier forecast which capped growth at 500TWh.
• AI data centers currently account for 31% of total data center power consumption, but are projected to exceed conventional server power needs by 2027

The last few years have seen AI chip demand skyrocket, with every major player in the industry investing in infrastructure, training, and inference hardware to build out their own data centers and clouds for compute.

The assumption was that better, faster chips were the key to unlocking both Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and AI-infused efficiency gains as the world shifts its focus from AI agents to AI operators.

The bottleneck that many saw coming but was arguably downplayed is now back in focus: Power limitations may cap future data center growth globally.

Not a chip problem, but an energy conundrum by 2030?

A recent report by Gartner indicates that AI servers might not have a chip supply problem, but power limitations that could decisively shape future data center expansion, bringing it to a grinding halt by 2030 if not addressed.

Gartner estimates while current datacenter power needs are capped at 132 GW, they could reach 290 GW by 2030, indicating that energy constraints will undoubtedly rule the roost in future AI data center planning.

“Surging demand for compute-intensive AI workloads is driving unprecedented data center power growth, while AI capacity is now constrained by power availability, making data center power security the new battleground for scaling and protecting margins in the global AI race,” said Linglan Wang, Director Analyst at Gartner.

The current estimate makes even the most extreme case painted by the electric infrastructure provider, Schneider Electric, look tame.

This is why Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has already begun to single out power efficiency as the reason its chips are superior to the competition.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Huang said that data centers and enterprise consumers alike would want the highest number of "tokens per watt" to eke out maximum value in a power-constrained future.

Scaling power generation or upgrading grids may arguably be a more complex or time-consuming endeavor than just the AI data center buildout, with Goldman Sachs estimating that as much as $720 billion in grid spending might be needed by the end of the decade to account for the added load that AI data centers will bring to the table.

Whether this plays out exactly as projected by Gartner remains to be seen; however, with every industry player indicating that they intend to increase spending on AI infrastructure, the projection that sees current power needs (565TWh) more than double (1200TWh) by 2030 is a very possible scenario, and the industry's focus might shift to delivering both power and efficiency versus raw compute over time to account for the change.

• Semiconductor stocks erased as much as $1.3 trillion in market cap as markets digested a host of news
• While stocks recovered mildly on Monday, they sold off again on Tuesday and Wednesday, highlighting growing concerns amongst investors of an overheated market underpinned by external factors
• Demand for chips remains strong, but a host of external factors and investors remaining skittish about the AI narrative may have tipped the scales considerably for many

Chip stocks have had an impressive run over the past few years, driven by red-hot industry demand, ever-increasing demand forecasts, and increasingly expensive and labyrinthine designs.

This impressive rally has led many investors to climb aboard a seemingly never-ending train, at least in the long term, as estimates, price targets, and outlooks have been upgraded across the board over the past two years.

Current movements in the stock market, however, are giving investors pause, with three of the last four trading sessions ending lower than the previous day's close.

A troubled market, or external factors?

While there is little to dispute the fact that the current chip stock rout was ignited by Broadcom recently posting softer guidance for its AI chip sales for the next quarter, much of what has transpired since might be something out of the control of semiconductor companies and their CEOs, even as they post stellar projections and continue to beat earnings estimates.

The results were somewhat devastating: Marvell collapsed 17%, Micron lost 13%, Intel and AMD each dropped around 11%, and Nvidia's comparatively modest 6% decline still pushed the world's most valuable company back below the $5 trillion mark.

Friday's movement was also exacerbated by investors reacting to other news: a stellar jobs report showing 172,000 jobs were added to the US jobs market, nearly double the 80,000 most economists had predicted. While this seems good news on paper, it makes a potential interest rate cut increasingly unlikely.

A rate cut is doubly important here for AI-related stocks; not only does it allow for investors to bring in cheaper money to buy more stocks and prop up an increasingly capital-intensive AI datacenter market's financing needs, but it also reduces the load of debt and securities that already are in play for many of the largest datacenter companies in the world, making it easier and cheaper to borrow more.

Investors are also reeling from a renewed US-Iran conflict, further exacerbating an already fragile oil market and complicating future inflows from Gulf states, a key market for AI investment, while driving up energy prices across the board, even as it risks spilling over to other regions.

At the same time, with SpaceX's IPO ($1.75 trillion) set to go live, coupled with investors looking at an increasingly volatile crypto market, and Anthropic ($965 billion) and OpenAI (est. ~$1 trillion) filing IPO paperwork, the market needs to account for at least 3 new sub-trillion-dollar IPOs in the near future and the capital that needs to be rotated out of existing positions to fund them make for a perfect storm in more ways than one.

The fundamentals, though solid for chip stocks for now, are under added scrutiny, prompting some investors to trade them for safer havens, including cash, bonds, and the more balanced S&P 500 index. Whether this is a sign of things to come or just the AI trade taking a pause remains to be seen.

• The Nvidia RTX 3060 and 3050 are apparently making a comeback
• A graphics card maker in Asia has new models planned as budget alternatives, and this practice could spread to other regions
• Meanwhile, we're hearing that SK Hynix plans to accelerate development of its memory chip production capacity and triple it by 2034

The RAM crisis appears to have another side-effect, namely bringing back old GPUs, but there's some more positive news for the future from one of the big memory chip makers.

VideoCardz noticed the resurrection of a couple of Nvidia graphics cards that aren't even from the past generation, but the one before that: the RTX 3050 and 3060, which are GPUs from 2020 that have been brought back by Manli, a graphics card maker that mainly supplies Asia.

The Manli RTX 3060 which has returned from the dead is a 12GB model, whereas the RTX 3050 has 6GB of VRAM and a 70W power envelope, meaning that it can run off the PCIe slot (with no need to be connected to the PSU).

Elsewhere, the future of RAM is looking rosier, with news from SK Hynix, one of the major three players in making memory chips, that it's ensuring that manufacturing capacity is being ramped up in a big way going into the next decade.

Chey Tae-won, the chairman of SK Group, said in an interview with Nikkei Asia (via ComputerBase, as spotted by TweakTown): "Since we're proceeding with the plan to expand as much as possible, our calculations show that our wafer capacity will double within five years. But honestly, once all these facilities are built, it won't just double, it will triple by around 2034."

So that means by 2031, SK Hynix will have doubled its manufacturing capacity, and it'll only be a few years more until that's trebled, moving notably faster down the line. That said, this is a best-case scenario we're told, and those expectations could always slide.

Analysis: a notable acceleration

This represents SK Hynix putting its foot down on the RAM production pedal in a big way. We're now looking at eight years for a trebling of manufacturing capacity for DRAM and NAND flash memory chips, whereas previously the timeline for this was 20 years. Yes – two whole decades.

This is a measure of how much RAM demand SK Hynix is expecting going forward – and that the current memory-hungry environment isn't going away. As we've been hearing recently, if anything, the AI boom is set to continue and gobble up even more RAM in the foreseeable future.

As for the Nvidia GPUs which are being brought back to life, this may be just in Asia for now, but it indicates that this could happen elsewhere, too. There have been previous rumors about the RTX 3060 12GB making a comeback, so here we're seeing some hard evidence that this is actually happening.

Are you wondering why it's happening? Well, both of these GPUs are back to serve as budget-friendly options in a time where current-gen GPU availability is becoming more problematic, and prices are rising. (Indeed, at the higher-end for Nvidia GPUs, price inflation has been getting quite nasty this year, and the fear is that it'll only worsen).

The RTX 3060 was a popular offering for a long time, and the 12GB variant proved tempting for gamers who didn't want to be shortchanged by newer Nvidia budget graphics cards that only served up 8GB of VRAM. While you may question the wisdom of an affordable GPU that packs on the video RAM in this memory-starved climate, remember that this Nvidia card uses GDDR6 VRAM, not GDDR7 as seen in current-gen Blackwell GPUs, so it's a different kettle of fish in that respect. It theoretically allows for some extra breathing room to produce some more wallet-friendly graphics cards without tapping into precious GDDR7 resources.

Of course, we don't know how wide a scope this apparent revitalization of old Ampere GPUs might have, and it could be quite a limited affair. Time will tell.

AI has become a ubiquitous presence in nearly every corporate discussion over the past few years, both positive and negative. Companies have claimed the technology as a boon to the bottom line while simultaneously pointing to it as the cause of job losses, sometimes hundreds or thousands of them at once. A recent comment from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is drawing attention for pushing back on that idea, however.

“I think the narrative that connects AI to job loss for many of the CEOs that are doing it, it is just too lazy,” Huang told Singapore broadcaster CNA. “How is it possible that AI became productive and useful only six months ago, and they were somehow laying people off two years ago because of AI?”

AI blame game

A message like that coming from the man whose company sits at the center of the AI boom quickly sparked a heated debate online. Huang had plenty of support for his pushback on blaming AI among invested AI users.

"I think the realization that these things are not good enough to be replacing [people] en masse has started trickling down to the average informed consumer," one Reddit user wrote. "This makes those press releases on layoffs being due to AI displacement age like milk: the stated reason of AI displacement is hardly true, so it becomes up to the market to interpret the actual reason for the cutbacks. That interpretation may end up worse than if they had tried to better control the narrative with 'strategic restructuring' jargon."

AI has become the answer for plenty of business needs that can be automated. Nonetheless, a healthy skepticism toward corporate explanations that center on AI is reasonable. Slowing growth, overestimated personnel needs, and shifting priorities can all account for layoffs, but some executives seem to see AI as a convenient umbrella excuse. AI simplifies a complicated set of business decisions into a story that leaves them blameless for downsizing.

The pandemic hiring boom gave way to seemingly endless waves of layoffs as demand slackened. But telling investors and employees that management misjudged the future makes it hard to justify the C-suite bonuses. Saying that AI is changing everything sounds considerably more impressive.

People may accept disruption more readily when it is attached to a breakthrough technology, but reality is usually messier than that. As Huang said, blaming AI for layoffs is a little too pat an explanation. Huang believes reducing every layoff discussion to AI oversimplifies what is really happening inside organizations.

Shifting futures

Part of the confusion comes from the fact that AI leaders cannot seem to agree on what happens next. Huang paints a picture of a future in which AI increases productivity and creates new opportunities. He talks about people working alongside AI systems rather than being replaced by them.

Others have offered much darker forecasts. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned that advanced AI could eventually take over most white-collar roles. Researchers have produced predictions ranging from mild disruption to significant labor market upheaval. Everyone agrees that AI is important, but nobody can agree on how important it is, in what way, or what to do about it.

For now, companies continue deploying AI tools at a breakneck pace. Customer service teams, marketing departments, software developers, and others are increasingly incorporating AI tools.

The fact that Nvidia has benefited from AI more than almost any company on Earth flavors Huang's pronouncement with plenty of irony. He would likely profit from presenting AI as an unstoppable force reshaping every corner of the economy. Instead, he is effectively arguing that executives should own their decisions.

• Nvidia's market cap tanked a mammoth 6% following weaker-than-expected guidance from rival chipmaker Broadcom
• The stock erased $330 billion in Nvidia market cap, effectively losing its $5 trillion market cap crown briefly before regaining it in the same session
• The behavior is in line with how high beta, or more volatile, chip and AI-linked stocks, respond to earnings

Nvidia remains the largest stock in the market with a $5 trillion market cap, but recent movements in the market, linked to another stock market darling, Broadcom, may have shaken the belief of some of its key proponents in a market increasingly wary about AI's lofty valuations in 2026.

Broadcom's recent earnings report underscored strong performance with in-line forecasts that reaffirmed its positioning as one of the most important chipmakers in a market that continues to pivot resources towards AI.

Despite this, Broadcom's softer-than-expected forecast for future chip sales might have raised eyebrows in a market expecting back-to-back earnings beats, even as investors continue to look sideways for the next AI-centric winner, with SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic shaping up to be key IPOs to watch.

A hitch on the road or a deeper fault line?

NVIDIA fell 6% in a single trading session on Friday, wiping out nearly $330 billion in market cap, even as its peers (AMD, Micron, and Qualcomm) saw drawdowns of more than 9% amid investor rotation out of chip stocks.

While this is a far cry from the 19% Broadcom lost over 2 sessions, it does reflect increased concerns that AI growth rates will eventually taper off, even for the king of the hill.

The punishment for Nvidia ironically comes from Broadcom offering guidance of $16 billion in AI chip sales for Q3, versus a Wall Street consensus of $17.2 billion, and while some might reason that weaker sales could indicate a stronger product for Team Green, which has been selling its chips hand over fist the past few years, often being backordered months, if not years for its highest-end offerings.

There are external factors also in play here: while Nvidia initially shrugged off Broadcom's price action, the situation was compounded by a hotter-than-expected May 2026 jobs report, gutting hopes of near-term Federal Reserve rate cuts — with some traders beginning to price in the possibility of a hike — and the combination of macro pressure, an impending Senate hearing on chip sales to China even as the US-Iran war continues to occupy global attention.

Mixed investor sentiment

Nvidia did recover somewhat in the following trading session, trading up 1.7% on Monday before moving down slightly on Tuesday, and continues to be down in pre-market trading at the time of writing on Wednesday as investors continue to look for a direction even as SpaceX's IPO launches soon.

Nvidia reports its annual earnings on August 26 2026, and while investors have high hopes from what many unequivocally consider the bulwark of the AI industry, much like Broadcom's earnings affecting the entire sector, Nvidia's own reporting earnings could shape investor sentiment for the entire segment.

This could affect billions, if not trillions, of dollars in current and future investments in a sector that increasingly demands ever more accelerants to sustain its growth narrative, even as Chinese AI competitors continue to eye a larger slice of the pie.

• Nvidia's CEO has said the RAM crisis will last for "quite a few years"
• The comment came ahead of the announcement of a multiyear partnership between Nvidia and memory chip maker SK Hynix
• It's one of the bleaker predictions we've heard, and it might be wise to take it on board if you're thinking of buying a laptop, PC, or components in the near future

If you were hoping the worst of the RAM crisis might soon be over — and we've heard some hints to that effect in recent times — you can think again, according to Nvidia's CEO.

Reuters reports that Jensen Huang just predicted that the memory shortage is a crisis that'll last for "quite a few years", and this doubles down on some of the more pessimistic forecasts about the RAM crisis.

Given that this comes from a heavy-hitting source – Huang was speaking ahead of the announcement of a collaboration between Nvidia and SK Hynix in a "multiyear technology partnership for next-generation memory" — it's a distinct worry for me.

As I noted at the outset, we've recently heard some more positive inklings, suggesting that the RAM crisis could be peaking and a recovery might arrive sooner than expected. That includes the ex-chief of Samsung's semiconductor business forecasting that the RAM shortage could possibly ease in just a year's time, or certainly by early 2028, partly due to the efforts of Chinese memory chip makers.

Previously, though, we've also heard that more RAM price hikes are on the cards due to disruption to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, as well as predictions that the memory crisis could be prolonged until the end of the decade.

Interestingly, that latter claim of RAM pricing misery continuing through to 2030 came from the chairman of the parent company of SK Hynix, which Nvidia just signed its deal with, and Huang appears to have adopted the same line of thinking. For me, the declaration of "quite a few years" means at least three, and hints at more, effectively backing that previous 2030 worst-case prediction.

What does this mean for the average consumer? The words from the Nvidia CEO carry some considerable weight, I think, and this is a rather ominous development in my opinion, although it's not quite as simple as "if you think prices are bad now, just wait — so buy, buy, buy, while the going is still relatively good".

Of course, calling the going 'relatively good' given the price of RAM sticks themselves is more than a stretch, but the truth is that there are certain categories of hardware you should probably consider pulling the trigger on now, to avoid what might be even more painful price hikes by the time next year rolls around.

Here's what I think we all need to consider given the current picture and predictions relating to the RAM crisis, in terms of different types of hardware. I should caveat all this by underlining that it is just my opinion, and I may, of course, turn out to be wrong.

Laptops: don't hang around for too long here

What immediately sprang to mind when I read Huang's comment was that this additional gloom nugget is another sign that the time to buy a laptop is now. Or rather, perhaps as part of an Amazon Prime Day deal (later this month) or come Black Friday, with these big tech sales in 2026 likely to represent your best chance to get a new notebook at a relatively affordable price.

The trouble is that if the RAM supply situation really is set to be a very rocky road through to the end of the decade, even the big laptop manufacturers are going to run out of all their inventory of memory bought at (relatively) cheaper prices – and the same is true of storage (SSD price hikes have also been seriously nasty).

If all this plays out as Huang expects, continued pressure on just those two component categories are going to hike laptop prices substantially over a few years. And that's not considering other pressures such as with discrete GPUs (that use VRAM) on gaming laptops, or price increases on other notebook parts, notably CPUs which are starting to feel the heat a bit in the broader component crisis.

If you're thinking you'll need a new notebook in the not-too-distant future, and you can score a good deal with a laptop that's on sale this year, I can't see you losing out. It seems unlikely that you'll find something cheaper next year, put it that way — and if there's one piece of hardware I'd advise buying with some level of urgency, it's a laptop.

Do bear in mind, however, that more Windows 11 laptop makers are now dropping models back down to 8GB of RAM as a cost-cutting measure to reduce those sticker prices, and there are caveats for future-proofing here, which I've discussed at length elsewhere.

Desktop PCs: ditto, sort of…

I think everything I've written above about laptops is also true of desktop PCs to an extent, as the same pressures around the same components exist broadly, certainly for prebuilt computers. Matters are worse in so much as a desktop will usually have a discrete GPU (much more often than a laptop will), and the price hikes therein add some extra misery into the mix, particularly at the higher-end (although the same is true of gaming notebooks).

So, again look to the likes of Amazon or Black Friday sales, and if you need a new desktop, a discounted prebuilt might turn out to be a pretty smart move this year.

However, a DIY PC build is a bit different and more painful these days, as you are sourcing individual components all with varying price hikes, and some of those increases are huge – you're lacking any of the cost cushioning that you might get from a prebuilt (where the PC maker gets cheaper prices for bulk buying components, of course). In this case, I'd be far more cautious, as it's not exactly clear how things will play out with component pricing more widely as I'll come on to next.

RAM and SSDs: the real pain points

The RAM crisis kicked off all this pricing pain when it began back in September 2025, followed by SSDs (which also use memory chips, of course), and at this point, price tags on both are massively hiked.

Having to buy system RAM is as bad as it gets when it comes to the extra damage to your wallet, although the exact extent of that can depend on the type of memory you're looking at. Prices of DDR4 and DDR5 RAM have trebled or even quadrupled in price, though, which is ridiculous, frankly.

In short, I'm loathe to recommend buying RAM at this kind of premium to anyone. That said, Huang's comment here hints that perhaps memory does still have further to go in terms of hikes, and as Tom's Hardware recently reported, a Lexar executive just predicted a further doubling of RAM prices by the end of 2026.

So, in spite of some recent evidence of memory price stabilization or even slight decreases, it seems the worst isn't over yet. At the same time, there's a ceiling as to what consumers will pay in terms of price hikes before they collectively fold their arms and refuse to buy. Overall, it's unclear how this will play out, and while the Lexar exec's prediction feels alarmist to me, it's not a great overall indicator of where we're headed – particularly now in light of what Huang's chipped in with.

I simply can't recommend buying RAM at the price it's at, and the same is true for SSDs in many cases. Indeed, I have to wonder how much worse the prices on these components can get before it becomes farcical, frankly. But for now, I'd err on the side of playing a waiting game to see how these fresher predictions begin to pan out.

GPUs and CPUs: a more positive picture, but not entirely

As for computing components outside of RAM and SSDs, the main concerns are the other key staples of any PC – the processor and graphics card.

If you're in the market for a desktop GPU in the near future, I think it's probably a good move to buy (again, perhaps with a bargain in the next big sale – though I think we're less likely to see any sizeable discounts on graphics cards as opposed to, say, laptops). That's because pricing is relatively palatable currently for mainstream products, meaning mid-range and lower-tier GPUs – we've seen some solid deals on AMD's RX 9070 XT GPUs recently for example.

For high-end GPUs – meaning Nvidia models – sadly price hikes have been a lot heftier (what with more copious amounts of video memory being involved for one thing). It's quite possible these graphics cards could see further cost increases, though, into next year, but the RTX 5070 Ti and upwards are already seriously over and above the MSRP to the point where I balk at recommending them.

CPUs are a different matter, with price inflation being much more restrained here, and with the possibility of processors getting more expensive down the line, I think it's a safe bet to buy one now if you need an upgrade. There's even a new budget Ryzen 7700X3D set to launch next month, and we could see further additions along these lines at the lower-end from AMD apparently, so I think the picture for CPUs looks stable enough for the foreseeable.

• Broadcom shares plummet after it reports earnings beat for Q2 2026
• The company's market cap shrank a mammoth 19% across two sessions after its earnings report was scrutinized by Wall Street, with its AI chip sales outlook being notably softer at $16 billion versus $17.2 billion for Q3
• The behavior may indicate a frothy AI market, where investors continue to obsess over future guidance and valuations versus current performance

Broadcom's Q2 2026 earnings report, by all means, reads like that of a company that is gearing up to benefit from a splurge in AI spending across the next decade.

It posted record revenue, tripling its AI chip business year-on-year and topping its Q2 earnings-per-share (EPS) guidance.

All of this, however, failed to satisfy investors seeking details on where the company intended to continue building on its explosive growth trajectory later this year.

A market accustomed to 'beat-and-raise' AI forecasts

The fault here may not be Broadcom's but the industry's at large, with investors expecting much more than AI companies are willing to commit to in terms of future guidance.

Broadcom's market cap at the time of writing stands at $1.88 trillion, still offering an impressive YTD gain of 14.09%, though it has corrected considerably from $2.28 trillion just last week (June 2, 2026).

Broadcom's somewhat aggressive collapse, which also brought Friday's AI- and chip-heavy selloff, returns focus to what is easily the biggest AI winner of them all: Nvidia.

All eyes on Team Green?

Nvidia, which currently sits at a considerably higher market valuation of $5.05T, also saw a significant decline in its fortunes as Broadcom's drawdown forced the entire segment lower.

It did not see as big a decline as Broadcom but still sank nearly 6%, as investors continue to bank on sustained demand for its AI chips and a technological edge over its peers, as AI datacenter investments shift the conversation toward efficiency per token rather than raw token output per chip, and as power concerns continue to mount.

Nvidia is hardly immune to said flash crashes itself. When Chinese researchers pushed DeepSeek, along with the narrative that distilled models could effectively cut GPU requirements to a fraction of projections, the chip designer saw its shares drop a mammoth 17-18% in a single session, erasing nearly $600 billion from its market cap.

The chip designer responded by appreciating DeekSeek's 'ingenuity' and highlighted that its chips were still just as important, if not more, going into the future, but the event underscored how quickly investors can react when any news emerges that appears to go against the grain of an everything-is-rosy narrative when it comes to AI stocks and chipmakers.

In a market that is now looking to usher in as many as 2 major AI IPOs in the near future - Anthropic and OpenAI at sub-trillion dollar valuations, one can understand why valuations are finicky, especially as investors are increasingly fickle about what direction to head in.

Explaining the situation or investor behavior in a market constantly chasing the next potential big winner is easier said than done. For context, the recent drop in crypto's market cap was associated with investors freeing up capital to buy into SpaceX's IPO, even as the company recently downplayed its AI ambitions

NVIDIA's next report is on August 26, 2026, where it will reveal its Q2 2027 earnings. The event is likely to be volatile as investors look for signs of either a continuation or an abatement of current demand for AI chip stocks, even as multiple investors, including Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates, warn of a massive bubble forming in today's stock market.

• Dell's new XPS RTX Spark Desktop has been glimpsed
• We don't have tech specs yet, but this mini PC could be a threat to the Mac Studio
• Apple is struggling to produce this Mac, and compact PCs like the XPS model could lure buyers away – depending on exact pricing

Nvidia's RTX Spark processor was one of the major highlights of Computex 2026, with Team Green (in conjunction with Microsoft) promising to 'reinvent' the PC no less — and we've just seen Dell's effort at a mini PC packing this CPU.

Wccftech caught a glimpse of the Dell XPS RTX Spark Desktop at Computex (via Notebookcheck.net), and as you can see from the image below, the mini PC takes a fair bit of inspiration from the Mac Studio.

It's a compact box with the power button on the front, accompanied by a selection of ports including four USB Type-C, and an HDMI plus Ethernet port. Around the rear of the XPS mini PC there are two further USB-C ports alongside a microSD card slot.

Whereas Wccftech divulges thermal info on a rival RTX Spark device, the Asus ProArt Mini PC, which targets 140W, we don't know how much power Dell will be supplying to this XPS box.

We're told the XPS mini PC will run with the N1X chip (the more powerful RTX Spark CPU, as you might expect) and up to 128GB of RAM on board. That copious amount of memory makes it clear that this is a device targeted at professional usage, and specifically running AI locally.

Analysis: sparking a small but powerful rebellion?

Reaction to the Dell XPS RTX Spark Desktop has been somewhat mixed, I think it's fair to say. As noted, we don't have the full story on the spec yet, and we're also missing some critical information in terms of the pricing. Dell hasn't indicated what this PC might retail for — we don't yet have an official press release for the device — and the same is true for pricing with other RTX Spark desktops (there are a bunch of these inbound, including one from Microsoft and the mentioned Asus hardware).

Collectively, what these compact PCs do offer is an alternative to Apple's Mac Studio at an opportune time when the latter is notably struggling for stock. If you want a Mac Studio right now, there's a distinct problem with Apple having order lead times of the likes of four months or more. On top of that, the maximum amount of RAM you can equip your Mac Studio with is 96GB currently, whereas some AI use cases demand much more than that (and that spec is only available with the much pricier M3 Ultra variant, otherwise you're looking at a cap of 64GB for the lesser Mac Studio).

So, in a time where that's increasingly a problem for developers and those engaged in heavyweight AI work, RTX Spark machines could be an alternative to Apple's PC — Dell's XPS box will run with up to 128GB.

The question is, can Dell muster stock which has that memory spec? As obviously it faces the same RAM headwinds as Apple does right now. The bigger worry for many, though, is exactly where the price might end up with such a model. The chatter we've heard thus far indicates a price tag for RTX Spark desktops which is north of $4,000 in the US, possibly closer to $5,000 (and regional equivalents to that). Although in fairness, a high-specced Mac Studio is very pricey too.

There may be folks who want to wait for the M5 version of the Mac Studio, granted, but I wouldn't hold your breath on that score. The RAM crisis is rumored to have sidelined that refresh for now, and that would certainly be no surprise given all the stock issues with the current Mac Studio.

As to how all this will play out, we'll just have to wait and see for now, as RTX Spark desktops (and laptops) aren't due to emerge until September at the earliest. If you order a Mac Studio from Apple now, though, you still won't have it by then.

One of the most important figures at the heart of the rise of AI is Jensen Huang, co-founder and CEO of Nvidia. His company manufactures the GPUs that excel in training and inference, and is positioning itself at the heart of the infrastructure and energy buildout. Like many prominent figures, Huang also has a take on the risks posed by this technology.

The existential risks of AI

There's no denying that, with any new technology, AI carries plenty of risks in its mass deployment and use. However, no other technology seems to have drawn the intensity in the warnings that AI has attracted. Speaking on the podcast No Priors, the Nvidia boss railed against the "doomer" narratives that have dominated.

Famously, a collection of scientists and tech industry leaders signed an open letter in 2023 warning of the possibility that AI could lead to the extinction of humankind, and that it should be considered alongside other societal-scale risks such as nuclear war. Signatories included Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Bill Gates. One notable absentee was Huang.

His perspective, which he outlined in the podcast, is that many of these fears are wildly overblown and far too influenced by the science fiction tales from the 20th century.

Are the risks really overblown?

Many of the fears associated with AI aren't tied to its capabilities today, but rather the more hypothetical artificial general intelligence (AGI). This form of AI will, in theory, replicate human intelligence, act autonomously, modify its own code, and set its own aims and objectives that it could work toward.

The possible outcomes are stark, but they remain unattained and likely won't be for at least 10 or 15 years, according to some, while others suggest it may happen much sooner. Either way, Huang is correct to suggest that current AI deployments are far too primitive and require too much human hand-holding for us to lose control. That said, agentic AI offers a new layer in the corporate attack surface, the more it is adopted by organizations, and may be vulnerable to exploitation in the future.

We’re now days away from WWDC 2026 — Apple’s major software showcase of the year. There we expect to (finally) see the new and improved Siri alongside some major software upgrades, stretching from iOS to macOS.

But this week was arguably just as momentous in the world of tech. Scroll down and you’ll see we’ve rounded up the seven most important tech stories of the past seven days, from Sony’s State of Play showcase to everything we saw at Taiwan's Computex, the world's biggest computing show.

Before you catch up with this week’s tech news, why not test yourself on last week’s eight biggest tech stories to see how good your memory is? Take the quiz below, or scroll on for the biggest tech news of the week...

7. Sony's State of Play lit our gaming fires

Gaming’s nouveau-E3, aka Summer Games Fest, has had various festivities this week ahead of the main showcase. One of which was Sony’s latest State of Play.

Thanks to Sony we got a better look at Marvel’s Wolverine in all of its goryness, a new trailer and a demo for incredible sword fight (and potential GOTY) Onimusha: Way of the Sword, and to top it all off a sneak peek at the next God of War title: Laufey.

We’re writing this up ahead of Summer Game Fest’s main event (it was last night if you’re reading this Saturday morning) but be sure to check out our SGF coverage over on TRG.

6. Lego’s new Pokémon sets left us thunder-shocked

This week Lego’s Smart Play sets evolved with 12 new Pokémon builds that we instantly fell in love with. The biggest win here — besides the incredibly well designed ‘mons (there’s 20 in all) — is that these sets don’t feel like they need the Smart Brick.

Sure Pikachu’s treehouse has several awesome Smart brick integrations that allow you to catch, train, feed and rest your critter as if the electric mouse were alive, but the physical play features enable all of this while the Smart brick just enhances things.

The same is true for each of the other builds, and they feel like a serious improvement over what came from the Star Wars Smart Play sets just a handful of months ago.

• Read the full story: I spent 3 hours with Lego’s new Pokémon Smart Play sets — they solve the Smart Brick’s biggest problems

5. Polaroid launched the 'world's smallest' instant camera

There's been a big trend in miniature cameras recently, and following in their slipstream is the latest version of the Polaroid Go — an instant camera that's designed for anyone who wants a big hit of nostalgia from a small, affordable snapper.

The Go 3 doesn't reinvent the series, adding a stronger flash, sharper lens and even smaller dimensions (Polaroid claims it's the 'world's smallest' instant model). But it might just be the ultimate summer festival camera, coming in a range of bold colors (white, black, teal blue, ice blue or purple) and costing $89.99 / £79.99 (around AU$150).

Just remember to leave some spare change for extra 'Go' film — the little 2.6 x 2.1-inch prints cost around $21.99 / £18.99 / AU$40 per 16-shot roll, so use them wisely.

• Read the full story: Polaroid just launched the ‘world’s smallest instant camera’

4. The Sonos Beam got a new rival

WiiM has been quietly positing itself as the answer to “What would happen if we built a Sonos ecosystem but without the app that made fans turn their backs?” for quite some time now. The remarkable WiiM Sound wireless speaker launched last year, and now the firm has released its first soundbar.

The new WiiM Bar (for that is its name) is essentially a direct rival to the Sonos Beam (2nd Gen) in terms of pricing and how the company wants you to use it, but it's bigger, beefier and has real upfiring drivers for Dolby Atmos — which Sonos' Beam lacks.

It also features automatic room correction, multi-room grouping, support for over 20 streaming services and, unusually, a glass-covered 2.1-inch touch display on the front. An odd choice when the last thing you want is an illuminated visual distraction right near your TV screen when settling down for movie night?

We spoke to WiiM's CEO, Dr Lifeng Zhao, about it all (good news! You can turn it off while watching movies or shows) and he's confident users will find it valuable for music streaming when not watching TV — which is how a lot of people use their soundbar, you know…

• Read the full story: WiiM's first soundbar is the same price as the Sonos Beam, but it's bigger, beefier and has real upfiring drivers

3. Android fans got a big June upgrade

iPhone fans are patiently waiting for the software gifts that’ll be revealed at WWDC 2026 on Monday, but Android owners got some new toys to unwrap this week — courtesy of a generous June feature drop.

The biggest upgrade is arguably Fake Call Detection for foiling pesky scammers. The downside is that it’s limited to Pixels (and select non-Pixel devices), but there were new features for most other Android phones, too.

These include wider AirDrop support and Google Photos Wardrobe, a new way to track your clothes and combine them into outfits. We’ll try not to take that as a dig at our fashion sense thanks, Google.

• Read more: 7 new Android features coming to your phone in June — including fake call detection and Google Photos wardrobe

2. We picked our favorite tech from Computex

Each year the Computex computing show highlights some incredible computers, and that was no different this year.

The biggest news camera from Nvidia (see below), but there’s so much else to talk about. Dell revived the XPS line with the latest Dell XPS 13 model being billed as a direct competitor to the MacBook Neo. Acer was also chasing the Neo’s popularity, while MSI showcased a beautiful, but not overly affordable MSI Titan 18 HX Dragon Edition Draco Epic that was a sight to behold.

Though but doesn’t hold a candle to the creative builds we also saw — which included PCs made to look like Matrix robots, a miniature science lab, and a giant mechanized arm.

• Read our full Computex coverage

1. Nvidia’s RTX Spark took on Apple’s M5

Computex 2026 was full of several huge announcements for PC users, but none was bigger than Nvidia's introduction of the new RTX Spark. This is an Arm-based chip packed with 20 CPU cores and 6,144 CUDA cores based on Blackwell architecture — and an integrated GPU that is said to be equivalent to an RTX 5070 GPU, which is great for gaming.

It’s best suited for, well, Arm-based laptops, which are known for their exceptional battery life, and Team Green has effectively green-lit its rivalry with Apple and its successful M-series chips (which are also Arm-based).

Nvidia, Microsoft, and Arm all lauded the RTX Spark as a ‘new era of computing’, and while that is the case for laptops, Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang has also made it clear that the chip won’t be used for handhelds — which will undoubtedly disappoint some gaming enthusiasts. Still, this is undoubtedly destined to be one of the biggest computing moments of 2026.

• Read the full story: Nvidia just unveiled its RTX Spark Arm 'superchip'

• Nvidia's rumored RTX 5000 Super refreshes are seemingly back on track, and could be out this year
• As well as the previously rumored variants, we could also see an RTX 5060 Super with 12GB
• This goes against existing rumors insisting that Nvidia isn't producing any new GeForce GPUs at all this year

Nvidia's long-rumored RTX 5000 Super refreshes might just be back on track, according to the latest from the GPU grapevine — and there could be an interesting twist here.

Namely, we could see a lower-tier GeForce graphics card get the Super treatment, as there's, in theory, an RTX 5060 12GB model inbound that could carry this naming.

As VideoCardz flagged, according to MegaSizeGPU, a regular leaker on X, this new refresh and the other previously rumored RTX 5000 models are "back on track" and may be released in 2026.

To recap, those earlier rumors pointed to an RTX 5080 Super and RTX 5070 Ti Super with 24GB of VRAM, and an RTX 5070 Super with 18GB. So, you can possibly add to that an RTX 5060 Super with 12GB. Nvidia has produced xx60-class graphics cards in Super variations before, of course (indeed, I have an RTX 2060 Super myself).

Analysis: is 'Kicker' back in play?

This is an about-face from the previous rumor mill chatter, which had floated the theory that Nvidia wasn't going to release anything in the way of new Blackwell GeForce GPUs this year. Of course, that could still be true as MegaSizeGPU isn't certain about the 2026 release timeframe – but the leaker seems fairly confident that these refreshes (supposedly codenamed 'Kicker') are back on the table for Nvidia.

Still, all of this should be taken with a good deal of seasoning, especially as this is a lone rumor for now. When other leakers back up the idea, we can start to become a bit more ready to believe that Nvidia may indeed have these Super GPUs in the works again. For now, though, I remain highly skeptical.

The reason why Nvidia seemingly shelved the RTX 5000 Super refreshes (and remember, these GPUs have only ever been rumors) is due to the cost of RAM, which is particularly applicable to these models as they pack so much video memory.

So, what changed? Nothing, according to MegaSizeGPU, it's just that Nvidia "can always get what it wants!" and therefore this won't be an issue as such. Team Green will still provide its card-making partners with GPU chips and VRAM bundles, we're told (meaning they won't make those board manufacturers source their own video RAM).

It still doesn't make a huge amount of sense that Nvidia might want to go ahead here, because with the higher-end VRAM configurations, those RTX 5000 Super refreshes are going to end up very costly, there's no two ways about that.

Okay, so maybe Nvidia simply won't make many of them – perhaps Team Green just wants to keep the GeForce range ticking over so gamers can't accuse the company of abandoning them this year (for greener AI pastures). In that case, though, stock will end up thin on the ground, and the GPUs will be potentially even pricier as a result.

We shall see, but if heavyweight RTX Super refreshes are incoming, I expect them to be wallet-damagingly priced. An RTX 5060 Super with 12GB, on the other hand, would be very welcome in helping address one of the major stumbling blocks with this particular lower-end model. Again, though, would Nvidia want what would effectively be a lower-end RAM drain that's (relatively) not very profitable? Again, time will tell...

Computex can always be relied on to deliver some truly inventive custom PC builds, and this year has been no exception.

One of the things I love about being a PC gamer is building my own desktop rig to play on, as the process enables me to optimize the specs to suit my needs and my budget, as well as giving me the chance to get creative. In the past, I've built a Star Wars-themed PC, a compact console-like PC housing an RTX 5090, and much more.

My attempts, however, pale in comparison to those of the professional PC builders and modders who are showing off their creations at Computex, and helping component makers display their products in eye-catching ways. Below I've picked out some of the coolest, and weirdest, custom PCs I've seen on the show floor this year.

Brass Wing Sentinel by Mark's Fabrications

Specs:

• RAM: KLEVV CRAS V RGB DDR5
• Motherboard: ASRock B650E PG-ITX WiFi
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X
• PSU: FSP Dagger Pro 850W

Entryopy-Core by AK

Specs:

• RAM: KLEVV CRAS V RGB DDR5
• Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix B850-I Gaming WiFi
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 9600X
• GPU: Asus TUF Gaming Geforce RTX 5060 OC
• PSU: Lian Li SP0850P
• Water cooling: Bitspower

The Arm by Mark's Fabrications

Specs:

• RAM: Teamgroup XTREEM DDR5 16GB x 2
• Storage: Teamgroup T-FORCE GE PRO GEN5 2TB
• Motherboard: ASRock Phantom Gaming X870E Nova WiFi
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9700X
• GPU: Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 5090 Articstorm AIO
• PSU: FSP MEGA TI MIT 1650W
• Water cooling: Bitspower

Mechanical Chameleon by Modding Cafe

Specs:

• RAM: G.Skill DDR5
• Storage: Lexar Play X 1TB
• Motherboard: Asus ROG Z890
• CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 285K
• GPU: Palit GeForce RTX 5090 Gamerock
• PSU: FSP Dagger
• Water cooling: Bitspower and Deltamine

The Lab by SamCa Studios

Specs:

• RAM: PNY DDR5 ARGB 32GB
• Storage: PNY CS2340 M.2 Gen4 1TB
• Motherboard: ASRock X870 LiveMixer WiFi
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7700
• GPU: PNY GeForce RTX 5060 16GB Limited Edition
• PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower PT 1000W
• Water cooling: Custom Thermaltake

Turbo D by MSCS

Specs:

• RAM: UD858 Dan Da Dan UDIMM
• Storage: AI828 Dan Da Dan
• Motherboard: MSI MEG Z890 Unify-X
• CPU: Intel Ultra 7 265KF

Untitled liquid nitrogen-cooled rocket PC by ShaggySVK

Specs:

• RAM: G.Skill Trident Z5 DDR5
• Motherboard: Asus ROG Maximus Z890 Apex
• CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 285K
• GPU: PNY GeForce RTX 5060 16GB Limited Edition
• Cooling: ElmorLabs LN2 block prototype

Untitled Matrix-style PC by WMP

Specs:

• RAM: G.Skill Trident Z5 DDR5
• Motherboard: ASRock Z890I Nova WiFi
• CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 265K
• GPU: Palit GeForce RTX 5070 Ti GamingPro
• PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower SFX 1000W - TT Premium Edition
• Cooling: Thermal Grizzly

Untitled shark-themed PC by Modding Cafe

Specs:

• RAM: G.Skill Trident Z5 Royal DDR5
• Storage: Lexar NM790 1TB
• Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix X870-I Gaming WiFi
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9800X3D
• GPU: Palit GeForce RTX 5080
• PSU: FSP Dagger Pro 850W
• Cooling: Bitspower

• Check out our Computex 2026 hub for all the latest news out of Taipei.

I've been stalking the halls of Computex 2026, the huge computing-focused tech event that's currently running in Taipei, Taiwan, in search of the best laptops that will be coming soon to consumers.

While one of the big themes of this year's event is, inevitably, AI, there's a lot of excitement around new laptops running the latest hardware from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm (Nvidia's new RTX Spark chip, and the laptops that run on it, are coming later this year).

However, arguably the biggest impact on laptops at this year's Computex comes from a company that isn't even there: Apple and its affordable MacBook Neo.

The Neo's shadow looms large over many laptops at this year's event — and that's great news for consumers. With Apple offering a well-built and great-performing laptop for $599, it's pushed Windows 11 laptop makers to make their own affordable laptops that don't feel cheap or underpowered. Read on to see the best laptops I've seen at Computex 2026 — and you can be sure I'll be calling all of these in (plus lots more) for full reviews when they are available.

1. Dell XPS 13 (2026)

Dell's decision to revive its XPS brand, only a year after it killed it off, has been welcome, and the latest Dell XPS 13 model is particularly exciting, as unlike previous models (many of which dominated our best laptops list for years), which were expensive flagship devices, the new Dell XPS 13 is an affordable laptop aimed to directly compete with the MacBook Neo.

In fact, Dell is so confident about the XPS 13's Neo-killing prowess, it had one of Apple's laptops on hand to help us directly compare the two. From what I've seen and heard, Apple will have a real fight on its hands.

Selling for the same $599 price, the XPS 13 (2026) offers a stunning aluminum chassis, a bright and vibrant touch-screen, and it's both thinner and lighter than the Neo.

It comes with two USB-C ports, and unlike the Neo, both offer the same Thunderbolt 4 speeds. The ports are on either side of the XPS 13, which I think is better than the Neo, which has both ports on the left-hand side, and it makes it more convenient when charging.

Another plus it has over the Neo is that the keyboard is backlit. The MacBook Neo's reign as the best budget laptop could soon be over.

2. Acer Swift Air 14 (2026)

The Acer Swift Air 14 (2026) is another MacBook Neo challenger that will launch at the same $599 price. It comes with an all-metal chassis, so again, this is an affordable laptop that looks and feels more expensive than you might expect.

It runs on the latest Intel Core Series 3 processors and should offer around 19 hours of battery life, which is a similar ballpark to the MacBook Neo.

Its 14-inch WUXGA display features a 120 Hz refresh rate and accurate 100 percent sRGB color reproduction — so I have a feeling it could also give the screen of the MacBook Neo a run for its money. The screen can be pushed back 180 degrees as well, which the Neo can't do.

3. Acer Aspire Go 15

The Acer Aspire Go 15 is the first laptop powered by the Snapdragon C chip, which was also announced at Computex 2026, and this could be incredibly exciting, as it's aimed at the entry-level market, so around the $400 range.

While very cheap, the Acer Aspire Go 15 won't be like previous cheap and flimsy laptops, and will feature an 8-core CPU as part of the Qualcomm Snapdragon C chip, a 1080p 15.6-inch display, and two USB-C ports.

4. MSI Titan 18 HX Dragon Edition Draco Epic

MSI always makes beautiful, if not always affordable, gaming laptops, and the MSI Titan 18 HX Dragon Edition Draco Epic really is a sight to behold, thanks to the stunning artwork that adorns almost every inch of this laptop.

This is a new dragon for MSI (which has an iconic red dragon as its mascot), and is named 'Draco' and is based on the Greek myth about the North Star.

The artwork on the back of the lid is slightly raised and looks gorgeous in person, and it comes with a limited edition coin, mousepad, and gaming mouse, all bundled in a stylish box to celebrate MSI's 40th anniversary.

The hardware inside is no slouch, either — you get an Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus processor, Nvidia RTX 5090 laptop GPU, an 18-inch UHD+ MiniLED screen with 240Hz refresh rate, and a whole lot more.

5. Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra

Nvidia's announcement at Computex 2026 of its RTX Spark 'super chip', which is an Arm-based chip with CPU and GPU, has been one of the biggest bits of news to come out of Taipei this year, and while MSI, HP, and Acer all have RTX Spark-powered laptops coming out later this year, the one that really caught my eye was the Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra.

For a start, Microsoft's Surface devices have felt a bit neglected recently. Once flagship devices that were aimed at competing with Apple, the past few years have seen them largely relegated to business products.

While the Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra likely won't be a mainstream product, as I have a feeling all RTX Spark-powered laptops are going to be pretty pricey, it's great to see a Surface product once again act as a flagship showcase for the latest software and hardware, and both Nvidia and Microsoft have made a big deal of how their partnership with RTX Spark will transform Windows 11 laptops.

Also, while the other RTX Spark laptops were on display at Computex 2026, we weren't allowed to touch them or turn them on. However, the Surface Laptop Ultra was in use in tightly-controlled demos by Nvidia, so I was able to get a closer look and get an idea of the kind of performance we should expect.

AI tasks, which the RTX Spark has been primarily designed for, were shown off, as well as 3D rendering and creative tasks. I also got to play some games on the Surface Laptop Ultra, including Alan Wake 2, which has been ported to ARM. Impressively, even the games that were running via emulation, such as Marvel Rivals, ran great, and Nvidia suggested we should expect the kind of gaming performance the RTX 5070 laptop GPU provides.

We'll find out more about RTX Spark laptops closer to their launch later this year, but I'm pretty impressed so far. An extortionate price, however, could easily ruin things.

• Check out our Computex 2026 hub for all the latest news out of Taipei.

• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang drops into Microsoft Build 2026 keynote
• Now AI is "actually useful", it's even more exciting, he says
• Nvidia's new RTX Spark chip will power future Windows 11 laptops, including the new Surface RTX Spark Dev Box

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has claimed the AI age has turned a major corner, with the benefits now being seen by more and more workers across the world.

Speaking via video link at Microsoft Build 2026 as a guest spot in Satya Nadella’s opening keynote, Huang built on his company’s recent Computex 2026 announcements by revealing more on how the two firms are going to be working together.

But it was the increasing ubiquity of AI technology in offices and homes that caused Huang to make his most interesting statement.

AI convergence

The theme of Nadella’s keynote was "unmetered intelligence", and a very tired-sounding Huang (who was speaking from Computex 2026 in Taipei at 1am local time - possibly why he wasn’t wearing his trademark leather jacket) praised the relationship between Microsoft's software and Nvidia's hardware to unlock this new world.

“We've been working for a decade and a half together, getting ready for, really, what happened in the last several months,” Huang said. “All of a sudden, because of agentic systems, the convergence of these rules, AI is now useful."

“It's clear that agentic systems are useful, that it's doing productive work, and also tokens are now profitable as a result,” Huang said.

Huang’s speech came shortly after Nvidia announced its new Arm-based laptop chip at Computex 2026 in a bid to take on the likes of not just Intel and AMD, but also hardware makers such as Apple.

Nvidia’s new RTX Spark chip will power future Windows 11 laptops, including the new Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, unveiled by Nadella at Microsoft Build.

The new device, designed specifically for AI developers will offer a ridiculous-sounding 1 petaflop of AI compute alongside 128 GB of unified memory capable of running up to 120B parameter models locally.

"This all started about three years ago," Huang revealed, "we were talking about how we could build a new class of PCs that's incredible for designers and creators, for AI, and be one of these systems has the processing capability, but also the software stack integrated...and here we are, we've built an incredible new chip, supported by all this software you created for Windows."

"We now essentially have the ability to have an autonomous agent running on the PC...the PC evolved from being an incredible tool...the idea that I could be travelling, and I can text my PC and ask it to get some coding done, and it would fire up the tools, and make the modifications I told it to do...my PC became an assistant!"

"The idea that the PC evolved from a personal computer to a personal PC, is just so exciting, and to see it come to life, and actually do that, I'm super excited by that."

• An Intel exec has said that Nvidia's new CPU is 'a good thing'
• Team Blue apparently welcomes the competition and it 'shows the importance of how critical the PC is'
• There are surely some worried faces at Intel behind the scenes, though, as to how the RTX Spark could drive the wider success of Arm-based laptops

Nvidia's RTX Spark chip, freshly revealed at Computex 2026, has been causing quite some waves, but Intel isn't worried about this new challenger in the CPU market apparently — at least not on the face of it.

The Economic Times reports that Intel's Alex Katouzian, general manager of the client computing and physical AI group, said of the new Arm-based Nvidia CPU: "If you take a look at what they brought to market (Monday), I think it's a good thing."

Katouzian then added: "It shows the importance of how critical the PC is."

These comments were made at a news conference over at Computex, where the Intel exec elaborated: "We welcome the competition, but I think we're going to do really well," noting that Intel has "every segment covered" with a strong roadmap at its back.

Katouzian also noted: "They [Nvidia] want us to grow with them, there's new opportunities on the AI side."

In a nutshell, the Intel executive is arguing that this new Nvidia processor is a positive development because it further establishes the position of PCs as important within the overall tech landscape, and that Team Blue is sufficiently diversified that it'll benefit in other ways (like the AI sphere).

How true is that, really, though — and how much of this is bluster?

Putting on a brave face?

I've got a feeling that while Intel can certainly see opportunities in some respects — and RTX Spark silicon is doubtless an injection of fuel for keeping PCs relevant more broadly, going forward — there's a lot more worrying being done about Nvidia's RTX Spark than Katouzian, or Intel's other top brass, would ever let slip.

The problem is that while this CPU might be driving the relevance of PCs in a good way, it's advancing the Arm side of the equation therein. Intel's x86 chips are dominant in the laptop world — as the traditional desktop silicon, if you will, with Windows PCs — and Arm-based chips represent a threat to that. In the recent past, that has meant Qualcomm Snapdragon X processors, but more recently we have had second-gen Snapdragon X2 silicon on the scene, and now reinforcements in the form of RTX Spark.

Arm-based CPUs offer some notable advantages, including battery life by the bucketful. Indeed, Nvidia has already promised that we should "expect all-day battery life" from laptops with its new processor, which is quite something considering the powerful performance packed by the 20-core N1x CPU and integrated Blackwell GPU.

Remember, regarding the latter, we're looking at the equivalent of an RTX 5070 laptop GPU here, in a thin and sleek notebook form factor, not a chunky workstation. (Of course, to be fair to Intel, I should point out that it has also made very impressive strides with power efficiency and battery life in recent times, with its past couple of generations of mobile silicon).

Microsoft just revealed the Surface Laptop Ultra as an Nvidia-powered laptop and it's catching a great deal of interest at Computex, underlining the threat posed to Intel to some extent — but there's also a potential fly in Arm's ointment that this device highlights. Namely that RTX Spark notebooks are going to be premium pieces of hardware, and potentially very pricey.

As The Economic Times points out in its report, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts have observed that: "This move [Nvidia's RTX Spark launch] may create incremental pressure for Intel and Qualcomm; however, given the complexity and likely premium pricing, we don't expect significant competition with mainstream AI PCs."

Here's the key point, though: the danger to Intel isn't from RTX Spark laptops as such, but the wider effect of this hardware on the balance of power in the Windows processor world.

Optimization and compatibility

The Surface Laptop Ultra is not a consumer-targeted device — it's for professionals, and indeed for local AI usage — and it will surely be eye-wateringly priced. (Especially with those beefier memory configurations and the current cost of RAM, even basic Surface devices are a lot pricier now). But what's important — or worrying for Intel — is what's happening alongside the launch of RTX Spark laptops.

Namely that this is driving further Arm-related optimization in Windows 11, as Microsoft made clear in a recent blog post (as well as moves to optimize performance with unified memory in the desktop OS, which is also part of the equation with Nvidia's new CPU here).

Moreover, RTX Spark is ushering in a drive to make even more apps compatible with Arm architecture. This means more popular pieces of software will be coded natively for Arm PCs running Windows 11, as opposed to having to run traditional x86 apps and rely on emulation. And speaking of the latter, Microsoft's translation layer (Prism) to run x86 apps on Arm systems has been refined considerably over the past year, and it's now been "tuned for the microarchitecture of RTX Spark" Microsoft informs us.

Even gaming, which has always been a stumbling block for Arm laptops due to compatibility issues — particularly those affecting online games due to the use of anti-cheat tools — is taking some big strides forward. The RTX Spark-related announcements Microsoft has made also included the revelation that the likes of League of Legends and Valorant are coming to Arm PCs, as is PUBG: Battlegrounds, with native Arm support for anti-cheat utilities BattlEye and EAC. (The latter is Easy Anti-Cheat, although that compatibility move actually happened last year, with Fortnite coming natively to Arm).

That's huge for gamers, and remember, this renewed drive for software and gaming compatibility doesn't just benefit laptops with RTX Spark inside, but also Qualcomm's Snapdragon silicon. Which means that much cheaper Arm laptops benefit here, particularly as Qualcomm has new Snapdragon C chips in the works, aiming to usher in much more affordable notebooks — we're talking the sub-$500 budget category (and equivalent in other currencies).

Spark of excitement

This is the true excitement around Nvidia's RTX Spark for me — that it might be a literal spark whereby we really see the ignition and take-off of Windows-on-Arm laptops, in the budget space, and all the way up to top-end offerings like the Surface Laptop Ultra. The latter will pack quite some gaming performance, even though I realize that isn't the point of these devices – but it's a nice bonus.

With the launch of RTX Spark, Qualcomm just welcomed Nvidia to the Arm 'family' and that feels like a much more genuine sentiment compared to Intel's equivalent 'welcome the competition' statement here — which feels considerably more political in nature.

Ultimately, Intel wants to keep the balance of power in the laptop world just as it is — with its Core processors as the dominant force — and Nvidia just made Arm a much more threatening presence as a rival in this space.

I very much doubt that Intel welcomes anything about that prospect, even though it does have cards to play in the budget laptop segment itself (namely Wildcat Lake, which is freshly on the scene).

• Huang says the supply chain is primed for "very robust growth" despite constraints
• SK Hynix is also planning to increase capacity as sector shows no signs of slowing down
• Nvidia shares are up following the news – the most valuable company is targeting more growth next quarter

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has revealed the company now has enough manufacturing capacity and supply chain support to sustain strong growth across its CPU and GPU businesses, despite ongoing pressure from the AI boom (via Reuters).

Speaking at Computex in Taipei, Huang admitted that while supply chain constraints haven't entirely disappeared, the company has managed to secure sufficient supply chain support.

Investors are also clearly happy with this news, as share prices rose around 1.2% following the announcement, with Nvidia now worth an estimated $5.434 trillion, retaining its position as the world's most valuable company.

Nvidia pleases investors with positive news from its supply chain

"We ⁠have supply for very, very robust growth, but we're still supply constrained," Huang declared.

The news comes as the company ramps up production for its next-generation Vera Rubin systems – Huang indicated that the second half of 2026 is likely to be "very busy" for Nvidia's manufacturing partners.

Separately at the same event in Taipei, SK Hynix said it plans to double wafer capacity over the next five years as expectations for AI demand remain via (via Reuters). However, the South Korean giant did note that memory shortages could carry on well into the next decade, indicating continued strain.

These comments came immediately after Nvidia launched its new RTX Spark AI PC chip for the latest generation of AI PCs – a sector of the market that Nvidia hasn't exactly been going after so much recently, with it instead focusing on the more lucrative data center market.

In its most recent quarter, Nvidia posted a 20% quarter-over-quarter and 85% year-over-year rise in three-month revenue, totaling $81.6 billion. This growth is also expected to continue, with Nvidia targeting $91 billion in revenue for its next quarter.

I've just spent the afternoon with Nvidia at Computex 2026, where the company went into more detail about its freshly announced RTX Spark chip, and the upcoming laptops that will be powered by it. One of the most pressing questions I had — as did many of our readers — is what kind of battery life we can expect with an RTX Spark laptop.

I put this question to an Nvidia executive, who said that while they can't provide firm numbers just yet (we'll have to wait until closer to the Fall launch of the first wave of RTX Spark laptops), we should "expect all-day battery life" when using these laptops for regular workloads.

Unplugged power

While this answer is a bit vague, it's good to know that we can expect laptops that you can work on for over an entire work (or school) day without needing to plug them in.

Battery life (and lack of) is one of the biggest pain points for Windows 11 laptops, especially compared to the best Chromebooks and MacBooks. And while the situation has improved — mainly thanks to more efficient chips from Intel and Qualcomm — battery life improvements are always welcome. That's especially true if Nvidia wants to deliver on its promise to reimagine the PC with RTX Spark.

According to the Nvidia employee I spoke to, the longer battery life is thanks to the fact that the RTX Spark chip combines both CPU and GPU, which is far more efficient than having separate chips for those components.

Later on, another Nvidia employee told me that RTX Spark laptops will maintain their performance when running on battery life, so users shouldn't see a dip when they unplug their device.

Again, this has mainly been a concern with Windows 11 laptops. In the past, laptop performance has been throttled to prevent the batteries from draining too fast (less power used by the components means less battery life used), so this is great to hear, especially as Nvidia is pitching the initial wave of RTX Spark laptops as mobile productivity machines.

Nvidia also confirmed to me that we should expect a similar level of performance as the laptop version of the RTX 5070 graphics card. Hopefully as the launch of RTX Spark laptops approaches, we'll get more in-depth details about what to expect from this new breed of PC.

• Check out our Computex 2026 hub for all the latest news out of Taipei.

• Nvidia, Unitree, and Sharpa have a new robotics deal
• The companies will produce a cutting-edge humanoid robot blueprint
• These robots are going to be better equipped for 'real work'

There are some very impressive humanoid robot demos out there, but questions remain about just how capable these bots are at tackling real work, without supervision — questions that Nvidia, Unitree, and Sharpa are looking to answer with a new partnership.

The collaboration was announced by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at Computex 2026 (via the South China Morning Post), and will lead to a 'reference design' called H2+ or Isaac GR00T: essentially, a blueprint that manufacturers can follow that covers every aspect of development, from data collection to real-world deployment.

Nvidia will be supplying the AI data that means robots will be able to reason and act in useful ways (the brains of the operation). "For agentic systems, robotic systems and physical AI, data is the hardest problem," Huang said in his keynote speech. "You've seen us moving up this ladder."

The brain itself will be the Nvidia Jetson AGX Thor T5000 chip, based on a Blackwell GPU. It provides 128GB of memory and up to 2,070 FP4 teraflops of artificial intelligence compute — a cool two quadrillion AI calculations per second, to navigate the world with.

'A meaningful step'

Unitree brings its H2 humanoid robot to the partnership, while Sharpa provides the five-fingered robot hands. Those hands are more important than you might think, if robots are to be expected to handle objects and operate tools with any level of precision.

The new deal between the three companies is "a meaningful step towards deploying robots that can perform real work, in real settings" according to Sharpa founder David Li Yifan. Work is now underway to get the Sharpa Wave hands integrated into the Unitree H2 — hands dexterous enough to deal a pack of cards.

Once the H2+ / Isaac GR00T reference design is published, it should enable companies to get robots into the field more quickly, and customize them more exactly for a specific range of jobs beyond the basics. Robots based on this blueprint will be able to better adapt to changes in the future too.

Nvidia had several other announcements to make at Computex 2026, including a world foundation model called Cosmos 3. This will give AI a greater understanding of the physical world from both first-person and third-person perspectives.

Nvidia has just announced its new Arm-based laptop chip at Computex 2026, firing a warning shot across the bow of Apple (who has found great success with its own Arm-based M-series chips), as well as Intel and AMD.

While Nvidia has been mainly associated with graphics cards, and AI, in the past, the announcement of its RTX Spark chip, which will power future Windows 11 laptops, could be a real game-changer. While there are a growing number of Windows 11 laptops running on Arm chips, primarily from Qualcomm, the fact that Nvidia, one of the biggest companies in the world, is throwing its hat into the ring is certainly exciting. As Nvidia claimed ahead of the reveal, alongside Microsoft and Arm, a 'new era of computing' has begun.

Despite working closely with Qualcomm on Arm-based Windows 11 laptops, Microsoft has failed to match the success that Apple has had with its modern Macs, which ditched Intel processors back in 2020 for its incredibly popular M-series chips, including the latest M5 variant.

Nvidia's entry into laptop CPUs could prove to be a major shake-up of the industry - and it couldn't have come at a better time.

Game on?

The Nvidia RTX Spark comes with 20 CPU cores (the CPU has been custom-designed by Nvidia and MediaTek) and 6,144 CUDA cores based on Blackwell architecture. Talking to representatives of MSI, one of the first hardware manufacturers to make an RTX Spark-powered laptop, this means the integrated GPU is roughly equivalent to an Nvidia RTX 5070 GPU.

That's a pretty exciting proposition, and could pave the way for exceptionally thin and light gaming laptops in the future. For the time being, however, it's important to note that RTX Spark laptops won't be aimed at gamers, but rather content creators.

That's because this is still an Arm-based chip, and native compatibility with PC games remains scarce without an emulation layer such as Prism, which might allow PC games designed for traditional Intel and AMD hardware to run on Arm, but has an impact on performance.

Instead, RTX Spark laptops will be aimed more at content creators, and Dell, MSI and Lenovo are major laptop makers that will be making those laptops.

Rumors suggest the Nvidia RTX Spark will have a TDP of 45 - 80W, and because the chip includes both CPU and GPU, I'm a bit concerned that this could mean the N1X struggles in pure gaming performance. A lot will ride on how power-efficient the chip is.

The RTX Spark will also support up to 128GB of LPDDR5X memory, and can use Nvidia's gaming tech, such as DLSS upscaling, ray tracing effects and G-Sync.

What about the rumored Nvidia N1?

Rumors had suggested that Nvidia would also announce a lower-powered chip witheither 12-core (2,560 CUDA cores) and 10-core (2,048 CUDA cores) configurations and supports up to 64GB of LPDDR5X memory, but this wasn't announced at the keynote.

Laptop makers team up

Jensen Huang also showed off RTX Spark-powered laptops on stage from MSI, Lenovo, and other major laptop makers, with a promise of these landing in 'the fall' - so don't expect anything before September, I guess.

These laptops will be thin and light, with some sporting tandem OLED screens with G-Sync.

These will be premium laptops, and this is perhaps my biggest concern: how much will RTX Spark laptops cost? No details have been released, but they could end up being very expensive. This will likely limit their appeal and popularity, and I hope it doesn't mean a return to Windows on Arm laptops that cost a fortune, which is what happened a few years ago.

If these laptops are more expensive than M5 Max-toting MacBooks (which launched at $2,199 / £2,199 / AU$3,499), then they are going to struggle. Time will tell, then, how scared Apple will be by Nvidia's new RTX Spark chip.

These are all the announced RTX Spark laptops so far:

• Asus ProArt P14
• Asus ProArt P16
• Dell XPS 16
• HP OmniBook X 14
• HP OmniBook Ultra 16
• Lenovo Yoga Pro 9n
• Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra
• MSI Prestige N16 Flip AI+

Jensen Huang will join Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella, on stage at Build 2026 tomorrow, June 2, where he'll go into more detail about RTX Spark.

• Check out our Computex 2026 hub for all the latest news out of Taipei.

As we draw towards the end of another week, it's time to look back at the stories that shaped the technology landscape over the last seven days — collected here for your convenience in our regular In Case You Missed It (ICYMI) round-up.

A lot has happened, as is always the case. The Pope weighed in on the pros and cons of AI, we looked at new gadgets from Oura and GoPro, Sony showed off its latest TVs, and Fitbit users were less than happy at being forced to use the Google Health app.

Make yourself comfortable and join us as we take a tour through those stories and more. Once you've fully caught up, you'll be ready for whatever the next week brings.

8. Oura revealed ‘the world’s smallest smart ring’

After much anticipation, the Oura Ring 5 is here, ready to claim the title of being the best smart ring on the market. Compared to the previous model, the new wearable is smaller, lighter, and more durable, while also offering extra battery life — you should be able to go for a week between charges (in our tests, the previous Oura Ring 4 lasted around six days).

There's a lot more to talk about with this new device, too, including the redesigned portable charging case, real-time activity tracking, expanded support for women's hormonal and reproductive health, and the ability to add lab results, such as blood test results, to your profile. We've got all the details here, including the price (which has gone up).

• Read the full story: Oura just unveiled 'the world’s smallest smart ring', the Oura Ring 5 — and members are going to love these 7 upgrades

7. We spent a long weekend with GoPro Mission 1 Pro

The GoPro Mission 1 Pro is a camera that GoPro is hoping will appeal to more serious filmmakers and creatives (hence the Pro in the name), and those with more to spend: it comes with a 1-inch sensor that's capable of recording in up to 8K video resolution, and a rugged design that keeps the camera waterproof up depths of to 66 feet (about 20 meters).

But is it actually any good? To find out, TechRadar's intrepid Senior Staff Writer Hamish Hector took the camera on a long weekend of adventures, exposing it to high May temperatures, sandy beaches, a paddling trip, and more. The verdict is that this is a GoPro that mostly impresses, though several limitations are worth noting.

• Read the full story: I spent a long weekend with the GoPro Mission 1 Pro — it survived heat, sea, sand and a couple of drops, but you need to respect its limits

6. The Jony Ive-designed electric Ferrari got a roasting

The newly unveiled Ferrari Luce is the first electric car from the luxury sports car manufacturer, and it's been designed in partnership with LoveFrom, the company headed by Jony Ive, formerly head of design at Apple. The big reveal of the car has led to a wave of responses online and off, and the majority of them are... not particularly positive.

Various commenters have compared the Luce to a Waymo robotaxi, suggested the design is "worse than I could have ever imagined", and concluded that "Ferrari have absolutely and completely lost their minds." Ouch. Don't take their words for it, though — have a look at the aesthetics of the Luce for yourself (even if it's unlikely that you can afford it).

• Read the full story: 'Somehow worse than I could ever have imagined': the new Ferrari Luce EV is getting a brutal reception, but legendary Apple designer Jony Ive has defended his choices — and there's one key decision most people agree with

5. The Pope warned us all about AI ‘dehumanization’

AI is the biggest talking point in tech at the moment, and Pope Leo XIV has now joined the chat. The Pontiff shared his thoughts on AI as part of his new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas — an encyclical, a formal document published by the Vatican and traditionally used to address major moral or social issues, in case you were wondering.

It's a long document, but if you want the short version, the Pope reckons that AI threatens to create "new forms of dehumanization", and that its "opaque algorithms" are a worry for humanity and social justice. There are references to the Tower of Babel here, and a warning that AI could be the next folly to lead to disaster for humankind and our faith.

• Read the full story: The Pope just warned AI could create 'new forms of dehumanization' — and his message feels aimed straight at Big Tech

4. Meta started ‘the end of social media as we know it’

Social media platforms aren't particularly pleasant places to be a lot of the time, so how do you feel about paying extra for them? Meta has announced that it's rolling out monthly subscription options for Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp — though at the moment, we haven't heard much in the way of details about what you get in return for your money.

Whatever the new plans involve, TechRadar's Editor at Large, Lance Ulanoff, thinks it's a bad idea and that we should expect more and more features to become paywalled as time goes on.

Might end-to-end encryption in WhatsApp eventually become a WhatsApp Plus extra, for example? Or could we see restrictions on free users in terms of posting limits?

• Read our full hands-on preview: Meta's subscription plans are the tip of a terrible pay-to-engage iceberg and may be the beginning of the end for social media as we know it

3. We reviewed ‘the most immersive Bond game in years’

When it comes to Bond video games, everyone thinks immediately of GoldenEye, and then... there's not much else of note really. It looks like that's going to change with the launch of 007 First Light from IO Interactive, which has been acclaimed by reviewers and gamers alike for bringing a high-quality, engaging experience to the Bond universe.

In our own review, which you can get to below, TechRadar Senior Editor Amelia Schwanke says: "007 First Light is perhaps the closest a game has ever come to making me feel like I’m starring in a Bond film... this stylish origin story still feels like a triumphant return for the most iconic secret agent." The game is out now, for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.

• Read the full review: 007 First Light delivers a blockbuster Bond origin story packed with spycraft, stealth and explosive action set pieces

2. Google outraged Fitbit fans again with new Health app

The Google Health app is now replacing the Fitbit app on Android and iOS, and the Fitbit community isn't happy about it: the new app has been described as "atrocious", "clunky", and "unbelievably bad" across the internet, and there are widespread complaints about fitness data being logged incorrectly and Google's AI coach being less than helpful.

There's no going back, unfortunately, for those who much preferred the design and the flow of the now-replaced Fitbit app. Google has said it will be working on fixing bugs and adding new features to the Google Health app over the coming weeks, but it will take time for these negative user sentiments to be turned around.

• Read the full story: Google Health is getting heat for being 'unbelievably bad' after replacing the Fitbit app — but Google says fixes are coming

1. We finally saw Sony’s first 'True RGB' TV in action

The arrival of new Sony TVs is always worth celebrating, and we've been taking a close-up look at the new Sony Bravia 9 II, Bravia 8 II, and Bravia 7 II models. These are the first 'True RGB' televisions from Sony, making use of an RGB mini-LED backlight: the tech promises an upgrade over mini-LED, through the way that the LCD backlight can adjust its colors.

There's a lot more to know about these TV sets, too, including pricing, which you'll find in the article below. Color range and viewing angles have been improved, as has the anti-reflective technology, and HDR performance is significantly better as well. We've also had time to check out the impressive Sony Bravia Theatre Trio speakers.

• Read the full story: I saw Sony's first 'True RGB' TV in action compared to a studio monitor and Sony's best OLED TV — and based on early measurements, Sony might finally bring 'reference' HDR performance to your home

And why not test yourself on last week’s seven biggest tech stories to see how well you were paying attention? Take the quiz below.

Although AMD has been at the heart of the recent components craze, with its stock surging by more than 3,000% in the last few years, the company hasn't been as essential to the AI buildout as Nvidia. However, its leadership in the form of Lisa Su has, for a long time, been attuned to the changing landscape of the industry.

Overcoming bottlenecks

The world of computing was a little different in 2013, when Lisa Su delivered remarks at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) about the challenges in continuing to scale up processing power.

CPUs were still the dominant component then, but Su, who was then AMD's senior vice president and general manager for its global business units, hinted at a future in which other breeds of computing architectures would come to the fore.

The solution that Su proposed — known as heterogeneous computing — essentially involved combining CPUs with GPUs and specialized accelerators to offload processors onto chips or components that are best suited to efficiently carry them out. With these systems, shared memory pools would allow the different processors to work in harmony.

Building for the AI supercycle

If that system sounds familiar, it's because it's exactly the sort of arrangement that goes into designing systems like AMD's Instinct MI400 family of components or Nvidia's Vera Rubin platform. These are superchips that are integral to the ongoing AI buildout.

Although the rise of AI in the way that it ensued wasn't on the cards in 2013, Su, who was appointed as AMD's chief in 2014 shortly after this presentation, articulated a vision that has been realized with full force more than ten years on.

The traditional era of computing, in which CPUs are the dominant technological force within a computing system, has given way to that more heterogeneous environment — not only in data centers but in consumer devices too — with GPUs, NPUs, accelerators, and other components, all cooperating (and often pooling memory) to run as efficiently as possible.

Jensen Huang has achieved rockstar status in the technology world for leading his company through one of the fastest and most exciting transitions. NVIDIA, the once plucky GPU maker, has now become central to the AI buildout, and its CEO has long anticipated the transformative potential of this technology.

Signaling NVIDIA's AI pivot

Mere weeks before Google scientists released their seminal paper on AI transformer technology, Huang made this comment in an interview with MIT Technology Review almost nine years ago.

The company, popularized thanks to its consumer GPUs, was in the midst of laying the foundations for its AI-fueled ascent. It had just hosted the "world's premier AI conference" in San Jose and was exploring how its GPUs could make a significant impact in deep learning, overcoming some of the inefficiencies we had encountered with conventional processors.

This quote references the way software companies surged in relevance at the time. With increased access to computing power, the ongoing cloud revolution, and widespread use of machine learning, SaaS companies penetrated the heart of enterprises and proved truly transformative. But, as Huang forecast at the time, their reign would not be long-lived.

Does SaaSmageddon have legs?

It feels like every Anthropic press release delivers yet another body blow to the SaaS sector. SaaSmageddon – the phenomenon in which disruption in the software market is being driven by emerging AI capabilities – is now underway as agentic AI is on the rise.

Was Huang to know exactly how this would play out nine years on? It's plausible, but today's market sensitivities are also impacted by global events and other developments that were impossible to foresee at the time.

In 2026 and beyond, NVIDIA remains central to the ongoing AI buildout, with the industry clamoring for its technologies, and its hardware is flooding into data centers globally.

The software sector finds itself on its knees but far from out for the count. It remains to be seen whether these companies can adapt to the new normal, or whether AI will "eat them" as Huang suggested nearly a decade ago.

• China has refused to buy any H200 AI chips from Nvidia
• The move might be due to costs or security concerns
• It comes after a personal intervention from Donald Trump failed to work

Right now, there are two main players in the world of artificial intelligence (AI) hardware: Nvidia, which makes some of the best-performing AI chips, and China, which has a surging domestic industry that isn’t as reliant on Nvidia. US President Donald Trump has been trying to change that situation and help Nvidia penetrate the Chinese market, but it looks like his latest efforts have backfired spectacularly — potentially ensuring Nvidia misses out on $30 billion worth of sales.

Last week, the US Commerce Department approved sales of Nvidia’s H200 AI chip to ten Chinese firms, including names like Alibaba and Tencent. That could have brought in $15-$20 billion for Nvidia at current prices, with financial analyst John Vinh saying Chinese demand sits at up to $30 billion, according to Moneywise.

Yet in a major blow to Trump and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the Chinese government has declined to approve purchases of the chips by its domestic industry. Trump and Huang had traveled for a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in an attempt to persuade him to allow the H200 sales to proceed. Instead, they came away empty-handed, with Nvidia telling investors its official market share in China is now effectively non-existent.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said of China: “They have a much higher level than H200. China needs it and yeah, it came up. They choose not to buy because they want to develop their own. I think something could happen on that.”

In other words, China prefers to orient its AI industry around its own domestically made chips rather than paying to use American imports. And it looks like there are several reasons for that.

Ongoing computing chaos

One reason Chinese firms might not want to use American AI chips, like those manufactured by Nvidia, is that they have to pay a sizeable fee for the privilege. Trump has managed to create an arrangement whereby the US government will levy a 25% tariff on every chip Nvidia sells to China, pushing the price up for these overseas buyers.

But Beijing could be worried about something else. Since US law prohibits direct export fees, the chips must be routed through US territory before heading to China. And that has stoked fears in China that the chips could be tampered with — perhaps to install spyware, for example — before being sent abroad. That has led the Chinese government to turn inwards and provide more support to its own domestic industry rather than foreign firms like Nvidia.

What does this mean for you? Well, we might see Chinese AI models like DeepSeek becoming increasingly optimized for Chinese hardware. That was already happening before the latest move — DeepSeek’s V4 update was optimized for Huawei’s Ascend chips rather than Nvidia's, for instance — but we could see more of this going forward. If you want to use those AI models, you might find yourself disadvantaged when using a device outfitted with a chip from Nvidia, AMD, or Intel.

Beyond that, it demonstrates that the ongoing computing chaos caused by the AI boom is still in full swing. With component prices through the roof and uncertainty over future sales for Nvidia — currently one of the world’s biggest tech firms — it’s anyone’s guess what will happen next.

This week, we were treated to Google AI updates galore at Google I/O 2026, and Apple announced the date of its own software showcase keynote: WWDC 2026.

To catch up on all this and more, scroll down to read our highlights of the biggest tech news stories of the week.

But before you go, you might want to test yourself on our tech news quiz…

7. The Trump Phone saga got worse

Last week, we reported on what was hopefully the end of the T1 Trump Phone’s saga: it is being shipped out to customers. Though this week we have terrible news, and that’s the personal data of seemingly everyone who bought one has been leaked, thanks to a security exploit on the Trump Mobile website.

This includes names, addresses, and “everything short of credit card number,” said YouTuber Coffeezilla via his Voidzilla sidechannel (who was one of the people affected by the leak).

This leak also seemingly revealed that only around 30,000 orders have actually been placed for the T1 Phone, and only from roughly 10,000 distinct customers, which is a far cry from the previous estimates of around 590,000.

• Read the full story: Trump Mobile seems to be leaking customer information

6. Apple set a WWDC date

Knowing when Apple will hold WWDC and knowing the exact day and time of the keynote are two different things. One is a signal to mark your calendar and make travel plans, the other (that keynote) is a trigger for deep rumination about all Apple will say and do. Now that we know it’s June 8 at 10AM PST, we’ve been pondering that big Google Gemini-backed Siri reveal, platform updates galore, a folding tease (please), and Tim Cook’s CEO swan song. What a wild day it will be.

• Read the full story: A glowing WWDC invite might hint at the next-gen Siri

5. Nvidia gave up on gamers?

Nvidia has seen incredible growth thanks to the AI boom — turns out making the metaphorical mining tool in the AI gold rush (with its processors being an essential component for data centers that power the largest models) makes you a killing. However, its latest investor call announced not only a record-breaking quarter, but also that it’ll be grouping how it reports sales for GPUs bought by gamers with those bought for robotics, automotive, and telecoms needs.

This change in strategy lines up with the rumor that we won't see any new GPUs from Nvidia this year at all, as it seems Team Green is turning its back on PC gamers somewhat.

The move to bury graphics sales in Nvidia's financial reports feels like another step on this path of marginalizing the GeForce family. We shouldn’t jump to conclusions, but it does feel somewhat ominous.

• Read the full story: Nvidia doesn't seem to care about gaming GPUs any more

4. We played Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced

After going hands-on with Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced at a Ubisoft preview event in Paris last month, we can safely say that this is a remake done extremely well. It has all the makings of a fabulously refreshed experience, taking one of the best games in the series, giving it a boost mechanically and a glow-up aesthetically, and still ensuring the right balance of the original’s spirit with some game-enhancing modernizations.

Combat has been overhauled to be much more action-oriented, and while there’s a clear influence of recent games in the series like Assassin’s Creed Mirage here, it still retains that flow, style, and piratical action that made Edward Kenway such a joy to take on in combat all those years ago. The world of the Caribbean in the Golden Age of Piracy looks absolutely breathtaking, controls have been tightened, exploration feels more organic and natural, and there are even big changes to those pesky and annoying insta-fail stealth missions.

We didn’t get to see much of the brand-new content that’s been made for Resynced, but we’re excited to dive back in and devour everything the original had, and more, all over again when the game releases on July 9.

• Read our full hands-on preview: Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced perfectly captures the spirit of the original

3. We tested Sony’s expensive headphones

Sony has launched its most expensive wireless headphones to date, the Sony 1000X The Collexion. The idea here is to take the technology of the super-popular WH-1000XM6, power it up even further with a next-gen processor and new advanced audio transducer design, and then add its most comfortable and premium physical design on top of that. Has it worked? Well, in our Sony 1000X The Collexion review, we had high praise for their more spacious and detailed sound, and their absolutely supreme levels of comfort and beautiful metal finish. So are they worth their steep $649 / £550 price? Well, that’s a bit more contentious…

• Read the full review: Are Sony’s priciest wireless headphones worth it?

2. Google I/O delivered Android XR… kinda

We’ve known since last year that 2026 will be Google's year of the smart glasses, and at I/O we finally saw that promise in all its glory as Samsung unveiled a pair of pairs from Gentle Monster and Warby Parker. Attendees also got to experience Xreal’s Project Aura glasses.

As expected, they’re essential Ray-Ban Meta glasses but powered by Google Gemini — though that’s not necessarily a bad thing given the popularity of Meta’s specs.

The only catch? We didn’t get prices or release dates for any of this tech, though Samsung did promise its glasses would land in the “Fall” (so either September, October, or November).

• Read the full story: We saw the first Samsung Android XR glasses at Google I/O

1. Google I/O brought AI galore

Google I/O 2026 kicked off this week, and if you were worried/hoping (delete as appropriate) that artificial intelligence (AI) was a passing craze, think again. The software giant revealed incoming Gemini-powered upgrades for Search, Android, Google Docs, online shopping, and even YouTube (yes, really) at its annual developer conference, meaning AI is likely to touch your life one way or another, sooner rather than later.

In fact, Google is so confident about the all-encompassing nature of its new software tools that the company used an iPhone (not a Pixel) to demo Gemini Spark at Google I/O. Was that a warning shot to Apple, or an olive branch? Maybe we’ll find out at WWDC…

• Read the full story: Gemini is becoming impossible to avoid

• Nvidia just announced its Q1 fiscal 2027 results
• This came with a change in the way GPU sales are reported
• They won't be detailed separately any more, but buried in another category — Edge Computing — and there are reasons to be nervous

Nvidia is flying with the revelation of its latest financial results, hitting a record-breaking quarter. But hidden among the trumpeting of success there was a move which I find somewhat disturbing regarding Team Green's gaming GPUs.

Tom's Hardware noticed that aside from the record revenue in Q1 fiscal 2027 – which hit a staggering $81 billion – Nvidia is making a change to the way the company reports its financials going forward.

From this quarter and in the future, Nvidia won't separately report sales of client graphics cards, meaning consumer (GeForce) and professional (RTX Pro and others) GPUs. Instead, sales of those graphics solutions will be absorbed into another bigger category: Edge Computing.

So, Nvidia will have just two main categories with its financial reports: Data Center (which encompasses cloud, AI and supercomputing) and Edge Computing (which is PCs, workstations, consoles, as well as robotics, automotive and telecoms). We won't get a breakdown of sales of graphics solutions at all.

Analysis: shifting priorities

All this sounds mightily dull, of course, so why does it matter to gamers? And why might it worry them, more to the point? Well, what it means is that it'll no longer be possible to see how the GeForce and RTX side of Nvidia's business is performing.

In short, it's effectively draping a cloak of obscurity (I found one in Baldur's Gate 3, I think) over Nvidia's graphics revenue so nobody can easily see how this side of the business is doing.

Of course, this is a reflection of a few things: most certainly that Nvidia has become an AI juggernaut. And also that all investors really care about is AI now, and Team Green doesn't feel that graphics are important enough to report directly. The various RTX graphics cards that Nvidia sells — whether GeForce, or non-consumer RTX models — can just be filed away quietly, in the background.

The worry for me is that this is also a way of keeping graphics sales out of the limelight if Nvidia is going to deprioritize its GeForce lineup going forward. With no visibility in the financial reporting, there's going to be no easy way to spot gaming GPUs dwindling.

That may seem like a leap to a conclusion, but it isn't just this latest move with the financial reports to consider — there's also Nvidia's wider attitude towards GeForce in recent times. With the RAM crisis, we've seen GPU price hikes and concerns over production and stock. On top of that, there have been rumors of GeForce models that were supposed to be released: RTX 5000 Super refreshes, which were heavily rumored, and supposedly designed and readied, but have now been shelved.

The chatter from the grapevine is that we won't see any new GPUs from Nvidia this year at all — not one — and that's very rare (in fact it hasn't happened in three decades). This is because Nvidia needs all the chips it can get — and perhaps more to the point, all the video RAM — for AI graphics cards, which are far more profitable than consumer models.

And let's not forget that Nvidia's keynote at CES 2026 — a show that's about consumer electronics — didn't mention anything to do with GeForce GPUs. (Not the hardware, anyway, although we did hear about DLSS 4.5, but that's not quite the same — the only hardware touched on was gaming monitors).

There's an increasing feeling among gamers that priorities are shifting more radically towards the AI side of the market for Nvidia, and away from gaming GPUs, and I can't blame people for thinking this way. This latest move to bury graphics sales in Nvidia's financial reports feels like another step on this path of marginalizing the GeForce family, and yes, I agree, we can't be jumping to conclusions, but it's all adding up and feeling rather ominous to me.

• NVIDIA releass new GPU driver updates for Windows and Linux
• Fixes 14 vulnerabilities across GeForce, RTX, Quadro, Tesla, NVS, vGPU, and Cloud Gaming software
• The most severe flaw, CVE‑2026‑24187, is a use‑after‑free bug rated 8.8/10 that enables code execution, privilege escalation, data theft, or system crashes

Nvidia has issued a new patch for its GPU display drivers, fixing 14 vulnerabilities in both Windows and Linux.

The majority of the flaws are labeled as “high-severity”, which is why Nvidia urged its users to apply the fixes without delay.

In a newly released security advisory, Nvidia said it fixed bugs in GeForce, RTX, Quadro, Tesla, and NVS product lines, as well as its vGPU and Cloud Gaming software.

How to patch up

The biggest vulnerability to be fixed is a “use-after-free” memory flaw, now tracked as CVE-2026-24187. With a severity of 8.8/10 (high), this bug allows threat actors to execute arbitrary code, steal data, escalate privileges, and even crash entire systems.

Several other high-severity vulnerabilities allow malicious actors to do similar things, from code execution to privilege escalation, and from data tampering to information disclosure.

One affects both Windows and Linux systems through improper access to GPU resources in the kernel layer, while another targets Windows specifically through a timing flaw that could be exploited to manipulate system operations.

Among the fixed flaws are two in Nvidia’s Unified Virtual Memory subsystem on Linux, which could lead to denial-of-service attacks without the need for elevated permissions. Nvidia's vGPU software, used in virtualized and cloud environments, also received patches for two vulnerabilities in the virtual GPU manager component.

Users can now download the updated drivers either through the Nvidia Driver Downloads page, or through the Nvidia Licensing Portal, depending on which products they’re running. Windows users should look for the driver version 569.49 and newer, while those running Linux, version 590.48.01.

Besides making sure the software is patched, users should also always keep their Windows Defender (or other antivirus programs) up and running at all times.

The company credited several external security researchers for responsibly reporting the flaws, including researchers from Seoul National University and Binarly Research Team.

• Jensen Huang says the era of "useful AI" is here
• Nvidia CEO hails the speed and efficiency of new tech
• Huang joins Michael Dell on stage to unveil new AI Factory hardware

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has once again laid out his support for increased AI usage in the workplace, highlighting the huge potential productivity and efficiency gains for organizations everywhere.

"Our company has always gone fast, but it’s really going fast now," Huang said on stage at Dell Technologies World 2026 this week, “We’ve now arrived at the era of useful AI, which is the reason why demand is going parabolic, utterly parabolic."

"What took months now takes weeks. What took weeks now takes days. And what takes days now takes hours. Things that would have taken an hour, you and I expect instantly now. It’s a big deal in productivity, but a gigantic leap in computation requirements."

"The new Jensen"

"What has really changed is that our ambition has changed," Huang continued. "There’s no question my ambition has changed. I wanted to be somebody to do something, make a contribution, but was the old Jensen. The new Jensen: I’ve got big ambitions now!"

“The amount of software work that we do in our company now supported by agents is incredible,” Huang added.

“One engineer, a really good engineer today, is working with an agent, but a really great engineer in the future is going to be orchestrating a whole bunch of agents. We’re going to be orchestrating a whole bunch of sub-agents to do work. We’ve now arrived at the era of useful AI, which is just really exciting for all of us because until now it’s been novel.”

Huang was speaking at his now traditional cameo appearance at Dell Technologies World 2026, where he spoke alongside company CEO and founder Michael Dell, who was also keen to espouse on the benefits of workplace AI.

“Not long ago AI meant assistants that could write faster and summarize better and answer questions, but that was from the age of 20 percent to 30 percent productivity gains,” Dell noted. “It was valuable and kind of amazing but really only the beginning. Now we’re deploying agentic AI autonomous agents that plan, reason, execute and adapt and close a loop.”

Now is the time for businesses to “completely rethink and reimagine” workflows for the agentic AI era, Dell continued, noting that this, "is going to lead us to gains of 20 times and 30 times in terms of productivity improvement...so who gets there first will rapidly distance themselves from all the rest, and the companies that do not become agentic AI-driven businesses I think will struggle to survive.”

Huang and Dell also unveiled a host of new improvements to their AI Factory initiative, which will be boosted by the new Nvidia hardware announced earlier this year at GTC 2026.

This includes a Dell PowerRack with Nvidia Vera Rubin NVL72 (a version of which was signed on stage by Huang), which the company says can deliver up to 10x lower cost-per-token than Nvidia Blackwell for massive-scale agentic AI inferencing, alongside new PowerEdge XE9880L, XE9885L and XE9882L servers — the first built on Nvidia HGX Rubin NVL8, supporting up to 144 GPUs per rack with 100% direct liquid-cooled compute nodes and up to 5.5x the performance of HGX B200.

Dell signed off by calling Huang a “great partner and friend, a true leader and visionary of the AI age,” noting how the next era of AI infrastructure is going to “built by deep partnerships between companies that are advancing accelerated computing and the companies that know how to deploy it across the real world.”

“I’m here every year selling Dell!” Huang quipped.