Microsoft to highlight cloud and AI stack for automotive at CES 2026
The company will use its fifth consecutive appearance at the show to position Azure as an end-to-end platform for software-defined vehicles, digital engineering and in-vehicle experiences, alongside a broad partner ecosystem.
Microsoft will present its latest cloud and artificial intelligence capabilities for the automotive sector at CES 2026, focusing on digital engineering workflows and next-generation in-vehicle experiences.
In a blog post ahead of the show, Microsoft said it will again showcase its secure technology platform for automotive innovation, marking its fifth year in a row at CES. The company said its priorities span software-defined vehicles, embedded software, advanced driver-assistance systems, autonomy and differentiation within the digital cockpit.
Microsoft pointed to recent Azure developments that support Arm64 architectures, graphics processing units and field-programmable gate arrays, enabling what it described as end-to-end engineering from chip to cloud. The company said elastic scaling, cloud-native continuous integration and continuous delivery pipelines, and high-performance computing are being used to accelerate software-defined vehicle development through advanced simulation, validation and software-in-the-loop testing.
A wide range of partners will demonstrate integrations and tools built on Azure during the show. AMD is providing engineering support with its AMD VAS stack on Azure, while Siemens will integrate its PAVE360 digital twin environment into that stack. ETAS is bringing its calibration suite to Azure to support shift-left development, and KPIT will demonstrate a next-generation agentic AI solution suite running on the platform.
Other demonstrations include work by Neural Concept, which is using the MIT DrivAerNet++ dataset of 8,000 vehicle designs and computational fluid dynamics data to shorten design cycles by 30%. Renesas has announced a vendor-neutral software-defined vehicle-as-a-service platform on Azure, incorporating Visual Studio Code, GitHub CI/CD pipelines and Microsoft Copilot AI.
In the vehicle itself, Bosch, working with Microsoft and NVIDIA, is introducing an AI cockpit platform powered by NVIDIA Drive Orin and integrated with Microsoft Foundry. The system is designed to support productivity applications and in-vehicle voice and safety integrations, including Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft said its CES presence will feature a broader partner ecosystem including Ansys, PTC, QNX, Synopsys and Tata Consultancy Services, with demonstrations and panel discussions running throughout CES 2026.
The Recap
- Microsoft showcases cloud and AI platform at CES 2026.
- Neural Concept uses 8,000-design dataset to shorten cycles 30%.
- Partners will demonstrate Azure-powered tools and agentic AI at CES.
