CES 2027 Plan for Service Business AI Buyers

CES 2027 takes place Jan. 6-9 in Las Vegas, and it's owned and produced by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)¹. Opening day has two keynotes in the Palazzo Ballroom at the Venetian and a third in the evening at Sphere¹,²,³. If you run or market a service business and AI spending is on next year's list, this plan can help you use the week to sharpen that list. It covers what to settle before you book, how to spend opening day, how to use Jan. 7-9 while the 2027 session catalog is still filling in, who to look for, and how to come home with a decision your team can act on. All times below are Pacific time, which is Las Vegas local time.

Quick Summary

CES 2027 runs Jan. 6-9 in Las Vegas, and its organizer is framing the show around AI that delivers measurable results. This plan covers what to settle before registration prices rise on Dec. 1, the three opening-day keynotes, how to build Jan.

CTA Frames CES 2027 Around AI That Pays for Itself

The organizer has been open about what it wants this year's show to be about. Brian Comiskey, CTA's vice president of innovation and trends, said in Seoul on Oct. 13 that what matters for companies is the results AI delivers for revenue growth and operating efficiency. Seoul Economic Daily reported his remarks in Korean, and K-EnterTech Hub summarized them in English⁴, so the exact wording is a translation. The next day, CTA President and CEO Kinsey Fabrizio told Korea JoongAng Daily that the show would feature more mature AI uses whose results companies can quantify⁴.

This framing is useful to anyone buying AI. If the show is built around measured results, it's fair to walk up to a vendor and ask what changed for a customer like you, by how much, and how they measured it. The theme is also worth holding a little loosely. The keynotes confirmed so far come from an automaker, a self-driving car company and a PC maker, and their announcements talk about vision at least as much as numbers¹,²,³. Results are the goal CTA has set, and the week itself will show how many exhibitors can meet it.

Is CES the Right Place for a Service Business's AI Questions?

This plan won't suit every business, and it's better to say so before you spend the money. The organizer says the 2027 conference program will cover AI, enterprise innovation, health, energy, gaming, manufacturing, robotics, retail, vehicle tech and advanced mobility, wearables and more⁵. It's also a trade event, with registration rules that differ by industry role⁶. If your company has ten people and your AI questions are about following up with leads and answering client tickets faster, much of that floor will have little to do with your work. For a team that size, a few weeks testing two or three tools on your own records may be the better use of the budget.

The trip is easier to justify in a few situations:

• Your clients sell into consumer tech, mobility, retail or manufacturing, and you want to hear the conversations they'll be having all year.
• You're setting an AI plan for a larger team and want to compare many approaches side by side in one week.
• You advise clients on technology, and they're likely to ask in February what you made of the show.

If none of those fit, following the keynotes from home and putting the money toward a careful pilot is a reasonable choice.

What to Settle Before You Register

CES makes it easy to start from the tool, because the demos are good and they're everywhere. Before you register, it helps to write down three processes in your business that you'd like to change. For each one, note how long it takes today, roughly what those hours cost each month, and what a client would notice if it got faster.

As an illustration, take a hypothetical 20-person agency where proposals take two days to go out and new leads wait overnight for a first reply. Those two problems give the trip a filter. A booth or session that can't speak to proposal turnaround or lead response time can be skipped, and the ones that can get full attention. Agreeing on a rough AI budget for the year before you go also helps, so a strong demo in Las Vegas gets weighed against a number you set calmly at the office.

The pass you choose shapes what you can attend. The Standard Pass covers the exhibit floor, keynotes, Great Minds sessions and select conference sessions. The Premium Pass adds all conference sessions and tracks, partner programming and a pre-show planning webinar⁵.

Registration prices change on Dec. 1. The Standard Pass is $149 through Nov. 30 and $349 from Dec. 1 to Jan. 9; the Premium Pass is $1,450 through Nov. 30 and $1,750 after that⁵.

Hotels are the other thing to book early. Navan's attendee guide notes that CES 2027 spreads across 12 official venues, grouped into the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC), Venetian and C Space campuses, and suggests picking a hotel near the campus where you'll spend most of your time⁷. Official housing runs through onPeak, which CTA names as its only official housing agent, and the guide says rates rise as January approaches⁷. In Navan's own booking data for CES week 2026, the median nightly rate near the LVCC was $439⁷.

Opening Day, Wednesday Jan. 6: Three Keynotes Worth Your Time

The first day carries most of the big-stage content. The CTA State of the Industry Address starts at 8:30 a.m. PT in the Palazzo Ballroom at the Venetian, and Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa will speak right after it¹. Stellantis has 14 automotive brands, and Filosa plans to cover how the company is building technology into its vehicles, software and digital services, with new vehicles, software platforms and demonstrations¹.

Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana will speak at 1:00 p.m. PT in the same ballroom². Waymo serves over half a million trips a week, and CTA presents it as technology that has moved from novelty to essential daily utility². That makes it a useful benchmark for what measurable results look like at scale, which is the standard the organizer has set for the week.

At 5 p.m. PT, Lenovo will host Tech World @ CES at Sphere, with Chairman and CEO Yuanqing Yang on stage³. Yang's framing ahead of the event was "the future is not AI or human, it is Human + AI"³. That gives you a good question to carry into the evening: in your own client work, where would you still want a person deciding, even if AI could handle the rest? Keynotes are included in the Standard Pass⁵. Sphere is a different venue from the Venetian's Palazzo Ballroom¹,³, so it helps to plan the move after the afternoon keynote.

Jan. 7 to 9: Building an Agenda Before the Catalog Is Final

As of Nov. 2, the organizer's pages list the 2027 conference topics and add-on tracks, but they haven't yet published individual session titles, speakers or times beyond the keynotes⁵,⁸. The session catalog and exhibitor directory sit on the organizer's planning site⁸. Checking it once before the Nov. 30 price change makes sense, since the pass you buy decides which sessions you can enter, and again in December as the schedule fills in.

The tracks already named give you a head start. The organizer lists add-on tracks including Digital Hollywood: AI & Super Creativity, Connect2Car: Connected Vehicle Intelligence, and Quantum Means Business: A Quantum World Congress Program⁵. If your clients work in media or automotive, the first two are where their peers are likely to be. For general AI questions, the AI and enterprise innovation topics in the main program are a good place to start filtering⁵.

The floor is too large to cover in four days, so a short list helps. Booking meetings on Jan. 7 and 8 with vendors whose products touch your three problem processes leaves Jan. 9 for follow-ups and for booths other attendees told you about.

A question that gets past the demo: which customer about your size used this, which number changed, over how many months, and who on their team checked the AI's work before it reached a client?

A vendor with a real result should be able to answer with a name or a number. If the answer keeps returning to features, that's worth writing down too.

Who to Seek Out in Las Vegas

Short conversations at CES tend to go further when you know why you're having them. A few groups are worth looking for:

• The Stellantis team at booth 4518, LVCC West Hall. CTA says Filosa's keynote story will carry straight onto the booth¹. For marketing leaders, it's a chance to see how a company links what it says on stage to what visitors see afterward, and to ask how they planned it.
• Speakers and attendees in the add-on tracks that match your clients. Someone in the Connect2Car or Digital Hollywood track⁵ is likely to be facing the AI questions your clients will bring to you this year.
• Vendors whose products sit on your customer records. These include sales, support and client communication tools. Ask how their AI gets permission to act, and what a person approves before anything goes out.
• Peers from other service businesses. Anyone weighing the same purchase can tell you what went wrong in their pilot, which a vendor is less likely to volunteer.

A one-line note after each conversation, covering the person and the problem you discussed, will save a lot of guessing back at your desk.

Back at the Office: Where Does Your Customer Data Live?

The week after CES is when the AI plan either takes shape or fades. A strong demo shows what a tool can do, and your plan also has to ask whether it can see enough of your business to do it. AI that drafts a follow-up email needs the deal history. AI that answers a support ticket needs the client's projects and invoices. If that information is spread across a CRM, a shared inbox, a proposal tool and a spreadsheet, the AI only sees a slice of it, and someone has to fill the gaps by hand.

Before choosing an AI tool, it can help to map where each of your three problem processes gets its information today, and how many places someone has to look to finish one. If the answer is four systems, connecting those records may be the first project, with the AI coming after. AMW Suite is one way to do that: it brings client, sales and billing records into connected software with AI agents included, and the agents draft in your voice and send nothing until someone on your team approves it.

Then go back to the baseline you wrote down in November. For each of the three processes, compare which pilot changed the hours, the cost or what the client notices.

If CES 2027 is part of how you'll set next year's AI plan, start by writing down your three problem processes this month. If scattered customer records turn out to be what's holding that plan back, See AMW Suite .