CES 2026
Lenovo Paints the Sphere Red: A Look at Chairman Yang Yuanqing's Keynote

[비즈한국] The Sphere, an innovative landmark in Las Vegas, was spectacularly bathed in the signature red light of Lenovo. On the 6th (local time), with the opening of CES 2026, the world’s largest IT and home appliances exhibition, Lenovo hosted its 'Lenovo Tech World' and unveiled its AI strategy.

The massive 16,000-square-foot, 16K ultra-high-definition screen filling the inside of the giant sphere overwhelmed the audience by projecting the image of a future city where technology and humanity work in synergy. Taking the stage, Yang Yuanqing, Chairman of Lenovo Group, declared, “AI has now moved beyond simply generating answers or writing code; we have entered the era of the ‘agent’—an entity that learns logic on its own and interacts complexly with reality,” while presenting his vision of ‘Smarter AI for All.’

Unveiling the Personal AI Agent ‘Qira’ and a Wave of New Hardware

The core of the presentation was the introduction of Lenovo’s first personal AI super-agent, ‘Lenovo Qira.’ Going beyond a simple voice assistant, Qira acts as the user’s digital twin and operates across all platforms, whether Windows or Android. Through wearable devices like smart glasses or necklace-style wearables, Qira shares the world the user sees and hears in real-time, proactively identifying the user's intent across all devices, including smartphones and PCs.

Notably, through its ‘Agent Core’ technology, Qira demonstrated the ability to decompose complex tasks into steps and build a personalized knowledge base by remembering the user’s past conversations and message history. Along with this, the company unveiled ‘Project Cubit,’ a dedicated high-performance AI computing device that processes personal data locally rather than in the cloud, signaling its commitment to both security and performance.

A host of hardware designed to house these intelligent agents was also showcased. The ‘Motorola Razr Fold,’ equipped with a vast 8.1-inch display, emphasized productivity that pushes beyond the limits of foldable phones, featuring a function to transform a user’s rough sketches into high-quality images in real-time using the ‘MotoPen Ultra.’

Furthermore, the next-generation ‘Aura Edition’ PC lineup, combined with Intel’s latest processors, boasted the power of AI PCs through borderless file transfers between devices, one-touch sharing, and intelligent work mode switching. For gamers, the ‘Legion Pro 7i’ World Cup Edition was unveiled, which learns the user’s playstyle to support a smarter gaming experience, while also showcasing the world’s first ‘rollable technology’ that allows the screen to change fluidly, capturing the attention of attendees.

Showing Off a ‘Hybrid AI Strategic Alliance’ with Global Tech Giants

Chairman Yang Yuanqing appeared on stage alongside global tech leaders from NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and Microsoft to highlight powerful partnerships. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang praised Lenovo for its expertise in building one-third of the world’s supercomputers and announced plans to build an ‘AI Factory’ integrated with the next-generation Rubin platform.

AMD CEO Lisa Su introduced the ‘ThinkSystem SR675i’ server, which spans from the data center to the edge while boasting the strongest current AI inference performance, and confirmed that Lenovo would be an early partner to adopt AMD’s Helios rack-scale architecture.

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon emphasized on-device AI technology capable of running models with billions of parameters locally, even on small wearable devices, predicting that intelligent wearables would become a new mobile category with billions of units. Microsoft CMO Yusuf Mehdi promised to seamlessly integrate Copilot into Motorola phones to ensure perfect connectivity with PCs.

Building on these partnerships, the ‘Lenovo Hybrid AI Advantage’ strategy aimed at the enterprise AI market was also detailed. Chairman Yang remarked, “Every company will eventually build its own super-agent; AI without infrastructure is like an F1 car without an engine.” The dedicated inference optimization portfolio unveiled for this purpose supports immediate decision-making in a wide range of industrial fields, from medical MRI data analysis to real-time fraud detection in the financial sector.

In particular, Lenovo’s patented ‘Neptune’ liquid cooling system was introduced as a key technology for driving sustainable AI development by maximizing performance while reducing energy consumption by 40%. Additionally, the ‘AI Library’ introduced by President Ken Wong provides hundreds of verified industry-specific solutions, designed to help companies create value from AI adoption within 90 days.

FIFA Partnership Redefining the Future of Sports

The grand finale of the keynote was the presentation of innovative technologies to be showcased as the official technology partner of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. FIFA President Gianni Infantino made a surprise appearance on stage to introduce unprecedented AI solutions to be applied to soccer matches.

He announced that ‘Football AI Pro,’ which provides precise data analysis and tactical insights to the 48 participating national teams, and ‘Referee View’ technology, which shares the referee’s field of vision with fans in real-time and maximizes judgment precision, will provide an immersive experience like never before for 6 billion viewers.

In response, Chairman Yang gifted President Infantino a specially crafted ‘Motorola Razr World Cup Edition’ on the spot, calling for continued passion for soccer fans around the world.

Concluding the keynote, Chairman Yang emphasized, “Lenovo’s hybrid AI strategy will expand beyond data centers and factories to sports stadiums, individual daily lives, and the devices in our pockets.” The market will verify the execution capabilities of Lenovo, which started as a PC manufacturer, as it evolves into a platform company that encompasses both personal and enterprise AI after CES 2026.