Getting a jump on the parade of announcements to come at this week's CES tech trade show in Las Vegas, the graphics and AI chip company Nvidia gave an unofficial virtual keynote presentation Tuesday morning, unveiling updates to its gaming, robotics, and auto businesses. Nvidia (ticker: NVDA) had a rough 2022, with its stock losing about half of its value. The company was hurt by a combination of a slowing PC gaming market, a sharp plunge in purchases of graphics chips by cryptocurrency miners, and softening sales of chips for data centers, in particular in China, where tougher export restrictions hurt the business. But the company remains a Wall Street favorite, viewed as a leader in the market for chips used in both graphics and AI applications. Nvidia focused in particular on the use of artificial intelligence software across its product lines.

Toyota is partnering with Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to research artificial intelligence and robotics in order to bring greater autonomy to Toyota cars. The car maker will contribute US$50 million over five years to two research centers that are being set up at Stanford and MIT. However, don't expect a computer to completely drive your Camry any time soon. Toyota will always assume a person will be at the wheel, said Gill Pratt, who oversaw the DARPA Robotics Challenge and is now joining Toyota as an executive technical adviser. Toyota will focus on creating "human-centric systems" that are supplemented by technology, Pratt said Friday at a press conference in Palo Alto, California.