CES 2026 was all about “physical AI” and robots, robots, robots

Ready to ship AI that works? Start building at mongodp.com/build. Hello, and welcome back to Equity TechCrunch's podcast about the business of startups. I'm Kirsten Koroszek, transportation editor here at TechCrunch. And I am joined by weekend editor Anthony and senior transportation reporter, also kind of space and a bunch of other stuff, reporter John O'Kane. It's been a long two week break for me at least, and I'm feeling very refreshed here in Vegas for from CES, actually, is where I'm recording from. So it's awesome to see you guys. I should also mention that today is Friday, 01/09/2026. So new year, Anthony. It's been a minute? Yeah. I mean, it's kinda slightly horrifying, but also exciting. I'm very excited to have not gone to CES this year. Aw. You know, we're gonna get to all the CES news later in the show. I'm still very much in kind of, like, holiday mode, but then there's been so much news already, including reports that, Discord is looking to go public, potentially to have an IPO in March. There's not a lot of details about the financials, but it does suggest that there could be you know, it's one of the kind of recurring themes on on the show over the last year or two is sort of, like, where are we at with tech IPOs, and and we could be kind of starting off with a pretty big one pretty soon. Kirsten, is this something you're excited about? Well, I've been so distracted with CES. I also have to say the pepper mill misses you Aw. Just so you know. Inside joke for listeners. But I've been so focused on, like, the CES stuff that when all of a sudden I saw that, I'm like, oh my gosh. I have to catch up on this. You know, confidential paperwork that's filed with the SEC gives the indication. It doesn't necessarily mean that it it's imminent. We've seen examples. I wanna say companies like Turo in the past who have filed confidential paperwork or via, and it took them a long time to either IPO or not. Via did, but it was an on again, off again situation. So it is clear that they're interested in it. They're starting that, but we don't really know no. Of note, Discord turned down a $10,000,000,000 acquisition offer from Microsoft in twenty twenty one four years ago. So I guess it's the benchmark, Sean. I don't know. Like, is it successful if they IPO and they make a bunch of money, like, beyond that Microsoft That's a good question. I mean, we're money's in a very different place now than it was then. Yeah. 100%. I guess it depends on how much they say AI in the filing. What I do know is that, you know, if they really are about to go public, then Discord's probably about to get a lot worse. So let us know if your experience with Discord changes …