By thomas 
Lenovo Auto Twist AI PC Concept
Lenovo is another company that stood out this year in terms of sheer innovation. The product that most caught my eye was the ThinkBook Auto-Twist AI PC Concept.
What makes this PC different is that it automatically pans the screen and on-board camera based on where you are in the room. This feature is particularly handy for those of us who have to move around during team calls or when you need to watch a how-to video while doing something else.
Watching that screen swivel automatically so it remained focused on the user was awesome. As AI advances, I expect we’ll see even more innovation when it comes to AI PCs.
HP Print AI
For me, 2024 was defined by AI innovations. The HP Print AI offering, released in September, directly addresses a lot of our aggravation with printers, automatically formatting things for pages without cutting off the borders and positioning the data and graphics so that each print job is perfect.
We’ve all had issues when printing a document and not having it lay up properly. Spreadsheets are the worst, often printing one line or column on a page and then kicking out hundreds of useless print copies that make little or no sense, like this:
Image Credit: HP
HP Print AI will auto-format print jobs, so the printed document is useful. The AI analyzes your print job based on past training to determine the optimal format. Then, it auto-configures for that result so each print job is as perfect as the AI can make it, like this:
Image Credit: HP
Printer technology needs to be moved into this decade, and this software from HP should do that. Expect to see more advances like this from many companies that plan to use AI to address customer frustrations with their products.
Disney BDX Robots
The BDX robots are part of Project Groot and use Nvidia’s Jetson robotic technology. You’ll see them at Disney parks, and eventually, you’ll be able to buy one.
This little guy is the closest to a real “Star Wars”-like robot I’ve ever found. I wish I’d been smart enough to invest in Lucas Films back then rather than spending my money on going to that first “Star Wars” movie over and over and over again. BDX showcased how far robotics has come, and we’ll be seeing a lot of amazing robots you can buy in 2025.
Nvidia Blackwell GPU
Image Credit: Nvidia
When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang first presented Blackwell, it was a fantastic event that showcased how a company should release a revolutionary product. This GPU is massive in terms of performance and power requirements, and it is forcing a gigantic pivot from air to water cooling in cloud and enterprise data centers as the world pivots to AI.
The backstory on this part and Nvidia’s entire AI effort is a tale of legend. Back in the early 2000s, when only IBM was really working with AI, Jensen Huang became convinced it was a much more near-term future event. For much of the next 20 years, Nvidia’s financial performance dragged as the company basically bet its future on AI. Had Huang not been a founder, he likely would have been fired.
Then OpenAI asked for help, and Nvidia provided it. Thanks to Nvidia, we now have generative AI that works. Blackwell is the current culmination of this work, a massive GPU that is extremely power-hungry but also incredibly efficient. While it uses a ton of power, it does much more work than any group of other GPUs or NPUs can do with that same power.
AMD’s Threadripper CPU was equally innovative, but it was designed for existing market needs. Nvidia was working on Blackwell before AI became a market, and that’s just never done. By taking what seemed to be an unreasonable risk and executing on it, Nvidia caught its competitors sleeping, and now Nvidia is nearly synonymous with AI.
Back when there were pensions, CEO compensation was more reasonable, and boards more supportive of long-term strategic moves, an effort like this wouldn’t have been that unusual. But in today’s world, you just don’t see that.
Nvidia’s Blackwell effort gave me hope that the U.S. might be able to return to a more strategic future. It caught the imagination of a world increasingly focused on and concerned about AI. Blackwell was a once-in-a-generation leap in performance and a massive bet that could have gone badly, so it is my choice for Product of the Year.