Razer brings AI and air-con to CES 2025

Razer has a rich tradition of bringing wild and wacky concept products to CES and the 2025 incarnation of the show brought with it the new Project Arielle and Project AVA.

Project Arielle is the more tangible of the two, though Razer insists its just a prototype for now. It’s a fresh spin on the gaming chair that builds on the blueprint laid out by the very real Razer Fujin Pro by incorporating a dual heating and cooling system.

Similar to what you’d find from Dyson, the back of the chair is host to a bladeless fan system that allows for on-demand cooling of between 2-degrees and 5-degrees Celsius. Alternatively, the Arielle’s built-in heating system can kick in to deliver up to 30-degrees of warm air. You can toggle between these two settings using a control panel via a control panel on the right side of the chair.

In practice, this setup was really impressive and intuitive. Given how sticky and uncomfortable an office or gaming chair can get during summer, I have my fingers crossed that this one makes it to market sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, as per usual, there’s no timeline on if or when Razer might look to take Project Arielle somewhere more mainstream than the CES showfloor.

The same can’t be said for Project AVA. Essentially, it's Razer’s attempt at developing an generative AI assistant for gamers. AVA promises to offer you real-time advice for both competitively-oriented titles like League of Legends and single-player experiences like Black Myth: Wukong as well as helping you get the most out of your PCs hardware though optimising your system settings.

During a booth demonstration of Project AVA, the system was integrated with a PC running League of Legends and offered timely advice in response to both player queries (for example, “what item should I build for this character?”) and also real-time information gleaned from the Riot's own in-game API (such as spotting the movements of enemy players).

Another demo showed how this setup could also advice akin to a walkthrough in real time. Razer said that this aspect of the experience has been trained on public data, but did not provide specifics. In the past, AI companies like OpenAI and NVIDIA have played been loose with what data is and isn't considered publicly available. I don't think we know quite enough about Project AVA to say for sure whether Razer might have gone down a similar route when it comes to getting Project AVA to understand how iFrames work in a Dark Souls game. At least, not yet.

We might have an answer sooner rather than later though. Project AVA is a little bit closer to the market than what Razer usually brings to CES. According to the company, it’ll be taking signups for the beta for the AI app later in the year.