CES 2026: AMD Unveiled Helios, Hardware That Will Power AI-Powered Content in Your News Feeds.
When you see an AI-powered video on Instagram or look at ChatGPT’s response to your query, do you ever stop to think about how that content was created? Beyond the software itself and the suggestions, generative AI requires enormous computing power, especially given its rapid growth in popularity. Therefore, AI companies need more computing resources than ever, which, of course, means turning to hardware manufacturers.
AMD has called Helios “the world’s best AI rack.”
During a keynote Monday evening, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su showcased the hardware that will soon power everything from ChatGPT to the AI-powered videos that flood your news feeds. To a backdrop of dramatic music, Su unveiled “Helios”—a future AI rack that packs a staggering amount of computing power into a rack weighing nearly 7,000 pounds.
Each “sectional” element of these racks, so to speak, is powered by four key AMD components: the new AMD Instinct MI455X GPU, the new AMD EPYC “Veince” CPU, the AMD Pensando “Vulcano” 800 AI NIC, and the AMD Pensando “Salina” 400 CPU. The specs are impressive: Helios is capable of 2.9 exaflops of AI compute and comes with 31 TB of HBM4 memory. It delivers 43 TB of scalable throughput per second and is built using 2nm and 3nm architectures. The rack boasts 4,600 “Zen 6” CPU cores and 18,000 GPU compute units. In other words, this is no ordinary hardware.
Su argues that the AI industry needs more computing power. She notes that in 2022, 1 zettaflop was used in AI technology, while in 2025, it will be 100 zettaflops. (For those wondering, one zettaflop is 10 to the 21st power .) This isn’t surprising: AI is everywhere, and many of us use it—whether we know it or not. Some use it openly, creating AI-powered videos or running chatbots daily. But others use AI by quietly incorporating it into features, such as real-time translation .
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Su welcomed representatives from OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, and Luma AI, which creates generative video content using AI, to talk about how additional computing power helps their programs. But during Luma AI’s demonstration of hyper-realistic video generation, all I could think about was how this type of content already tricks people into thinking it’s real , when in fact it’s completely fabricated—not to mention the impact on human artists . AMD is optimistic about AI and the data centers that support it, but critics are opposed, citing concerns about the impact on the communities where companies build these data centers.
Helios will likely be a major success for AMD, but it’s coming at an interesting time for technology and AI in general. AI is more popular than ever, but also more controversial than ever. I think hardware like Helios will only add fuel to the fire in both directions.
AMD Ryzen AI 400 Series
In addition to Helios, Su announced the AMD Ryzen AI 400 series. These latest chips feature 12 “Zen 5” CPU cores and 24 threads, 16 RDNA 3.5 GPU cores, an XDNA 2 neural processing unit with 60 TOPS performance, and 8533 MT/s memory. AMD claims the Ryzen AI 400 series is 1.7x faster in content creation and 1.3x faster in multitasking compared to the Intel Core Ultra 9 288V.
These new chips will soon appear in a number of major PC manufacturers, including Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Beelink, Colorful, Gigabyte, LG, Mechrevo, MSI and NEC.