Meta has acquired Limitless, the maker of an AI-powered "Pendant," to work on building consumer hardware for the company, the startup announced via a YouTube video and blog post. So far, Meta has focused on selling VR headsets and AI smart glasses. Now the company seems interested in branching out.

"Meta recently announced a new vision to bring personal superintelligence to everyone and a key part of that vision is building incredible AI-enabled wearables. We share this vision and we'll be joining Meta to help bring our shared vision to life," Limitless CEO Dan Siroker said in the post announcing the acquisition.

Limitless' first product was Rewind, desktop productivity software that recorded everything you did on your computer and turned it into a searchable database you interacted with via a chatbot. The company later expanded into hardware with Pendant, essentially a clip-on Bluetooth microphone that applies the same concept (privacy concerns be damned) to the things you say or hear throughout the day.

The company plans to support its existing Pendant customers "for at least another year," but will no longer sell the wearable going forward. Current customers will be able to access all the features of Pendant without having to pay for a subscription, though Limitless says availability will vary per region. If you have data stored with Limitless and don’t want to hold onto your Pendant, you're now also able to export or delete your data if you choose.

AI wearables focused on recording audio have emerged as a common form factor primarily because they lean on two things AI models do moderately well: transcribing audio into text and summarizing it. Meta dipping its toes into the space makes sense, if only because not everyone will want to wear glasses to receive the benefits of an AI assistant. Amazon acquired an AI wearable company called Bee in July 2025, presumably with similar intentions.

Add in Meta's recent hiring of former Apple design lead Alan Dye, and you can start to imagine where things might be headed. In the future, the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses and Meta Ray-Ban Display could be two entries in a larger lineup of AI-powered wearables.

CES doesn't start until January, but whispers of the products and announcements that could be in store for tech's biggest annual conference have already started to take shape. The CES 2026 show floor is officially open from January 6 through 9, although the show kicks off with events on Sunday January 4 and a host of press conferences on Monday. As always, product demos, announcements and networking will be happening at the Las Vegas Convention Center and surrounding hotels all over the city. As usual, Engadget will be covering the event in-person and remotely, bringing you news and hands-ons straight from the show floor.

More specific details and pre-announcements should trickle out as CES approaches, but in the meantime, we do know what companies will be hosting press conferences and what tech trends could rear their heads at the show.

What we already know about

Press conferences and show floor booths are the bread and butter of CES. The Consumer Technology Association has already published a searchable directory of who will have a presence at the show, along with a schedule of every official panel and presentation.

On Sunday, January 4, Samsung will kick-off CES with "The First Look," a presentation hosted by TM Roh, the CEO of Samsung's DX Division, on the company's "vision for the DX (Device eXperience) Division in 2026, along with new AI-driven customer experiences." 

That'll be followed by multiple press conferences throughout Monday, January 5. LG is hosting its "Innovation in Tune with You" presentation to share "its vision for elevating daily life through Affectionate Intelligence" at the start of the day, Intel is launching its new Core Ultra Series 3 processors in the afternoon, Sony Honda Mobility is holding a press conference on its first car and AMD CEO Lisa Su will cover AMD's upcoming chip announcements at a keynote address that closes out the day.

Finally, on Tuesday, January 6, Lenovo CEO Yuanqing Yang will host Lenovo's Tech World Conference at Sphere, using the large and decidedly curved screen to share the company's "commitment to delivering smarter AI for all by constantly redefining how technology can engage, inspire, and empower." It’s worth noting that Lenovo is the parent company of Motorola, which still makes phones and foldables that feature AI tools, so it’s possible those devices feature in the presentation as well.

Outside of the formal introduction of new products and initiatives, reading the tea leaves of what was announced last year and what companies are reportedly working on, we can make some educated guesses at what we could see at CES 2026.

New chips from AMD, Intel and Qualcomm

CES is frequently the start of a cascade of new chip announcements for a given year, and one of the first places new silicon appears in real consumer products. AMD will likely use its keynote to introduce new versions of its Ryzen chips, including the recently spotted Ryzen 7 9850X3D, which is expected to offer better single-threaded performance, and the Ryzen 9000G series, which could be built with AMD's Zen 5 architecture. The company might also use its CES stage to go over its new FSR Redstone AI upscaling tech.

Intel has already publicly announced that it'll launch its Panther Lake chips at CES 2026. The officially titled Intel Core Ultra Series 3 chips fit into Intel's overall "AI PC" push, but are specifically meant for premium laptops. Based on a preview from October 2025, Intel says the first chip made with its 2-nanometer 18A process will offer 50 percent more processing performance than previous generations and for the chip's Arc GPU, a 50 percent performance bump from last generation.

Qualcomm is also rumored to be targeting laptops at the show, building on the work it's done moving its Snapdragon chips out of phones and tablets and into other types of computers. The company's Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Premium chips should start appearing in laptops at CES 2026, offering a look at the improved speed and AI performance the company promised in 2025.

Brighter, "truer" screens

Sony announced a collection of new Bravia TVs in April 2025, replacing the company's flagship, filling in its midrange options and adding a new budget model to the mix. The star of this updated Bravia lineup is the Bravia 9, which features a QD-OLED panel, but Sony appears to be prepping entirely new display tech for 2026. In March 2025, Sony introduced a new RGB LED panel that uses individual Mini LED backlights colored in red, green and blue to produce even brighter, more accurate colors. In contrast to a QD-OLED, which filters a layer of blue organic light emitting diodes through quantum dots that change color, Sony's "General RGB LED Backlight Technology" can get as bright as a Mini LED panel without needing an extra filter layer or worrying about OLED's problems with burn-in. 

The company has already trademarked the name "True RGB," which could end up being what Sony calls this new flavor of display if it decides to show them off at CES. It seems entirely likely, because CES is nothing if not a TV show — it’s a sure bet that we’ll see new TVs from the likes of LG and Samsung in addition to Sony. If the company doesn't introduce new display tech for its TVs, it does have a new 240Hz PlayStation monitor coming in 2026 that it could show off at CES instead.

Sony isn't the only company hyped on bright screens. Samsung is reportedly pushing an updated version of the HDR10 and HDR10+ standards that could be ready to demo at CES 2026. The new HDR10+ Advanced standard would be Samsung's answer to Dolby Vision 2, which includes support for things bi-directional tone mapping and intelligent features that automatically adapt sports and gaming content. Samsung's take will reportedly offer improved brightness, genre-based tone mapping and intelligent motion smoothing options, among other improvements.

Ballie Watch 2026

The ball-shaped yellow robot lovingly known as "Ballie" has been announced twice, first in 2020 and then again in 2024 with a projector in tow. Samsung said Ballie would go on sale in 2025 at CES last year and then shared in April 2025 that Ballie would ship this summer with Google's Gemini onboard. But it's nearly 2026, and Ballie is nowhere to be seen. It's possible Samsung could make a third attempt at announcing its robot at CES 2026, but whether or not it does, robotics will still be a big part of the show.

Robot vacuums and mops were a major highlight of CES 2025, and it's safe to expect notable improvements from the new models that are announced at CES 2026. Not every company will adopt the retractable arm of the Roborock Saros Z70, but robot vacuums with legs for rising over small ledges like the Dreame X50 seem like they could become the norm. Roborock could also show off its new Roborock Qrevo Curv 2 Flow, the first of its robot vacuums to feature a retractable roller mop.

Beyond just traversing spaces more efficiently, improving robots' navigation could also be a major concern at the show. Prominent members of the AI industry are turning their attention from large language models to world models, which aim to give AI a deep understanding of physical space. Those world models could be the key to making robots, bipedal or otherwise, competent at navigating homes and workplaces, and will likely be a significant talking point at CES 2026.

We’ll be updating this article throughout the month as more rumors surface and new products are confirmed — stay tuned for future updates!

Update, December 11 2025, 11:03AM ET: This story has been updated to include detail on Lenovo being Motorola’s parent company and how the latter might have a part in the Tuesday presentation.

Roskomnadzor, Russia's federal agency for monitoring and censoring mass media, has blocked access to Snapchat and FaceTime in the country, Bloomberg reports, citing Russian news service Interfax. The bans were reportedly put in place because the platforms were used "to organize and carry out terrorist acts,” and commit fraud.

It's not clear if either service is still accessible by using a VPN, but banning Snapchat and FaceTime fits with Russia’s crackdown on communication and social platforms that started after the country’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Facebook and X were blocked in March of that year, and Instagram was added to the ban list not long after. In 2024, the encrypted messaging app Signal was also banned, and more recently in July 2025, Russia threatened to block access to WhatsApp.

Engadget has contacted both Apple and Snap to comment on the Russian bans. We'll update this article if we hear back.

Banning or restricting these platforms is a way to exert control over where and how conversation happens in Russia — and prevent the spread of "LGBT propaganda," if you believe Roskomnadzor's reasoning for banning Roblox — but it might also be an attempt to drive people to use "MAX," a state-run super app that offers services like communication, banking and document storage. The app is part of a long-standing push to rely on Russia's tech industry rather than foreign companies, and could potentially give the Russian government an easier method for surveilling its citizens, The New York Times reports.