What we’re looking for at CES.
New year, (kind of) new us. Starting Wednesday, you may notice Tech Brew’s got a new look for the new year. We’re expanding our coverage, and just like everyone attempting to achieve their resolutions, we’re going to need a little help along the way. Do you have a device or app you absolutely swear by (or one that totally let you down)? Tell us about it and your insights could be featured in an upcoming edition.
In today’s edition:
- What we’re looking for at CES
- Using physics to make foods vibrant
- How robotic surgery’s past is informing its future
—Patrick Kulp, Jordyn Grzelewski, Tricia Crimmins, Annie Saunders, Caroline Catherman
CES 2026
On the lookout
Anadolu/Getty Images
Morning Brew is debuting an Enterprise Tech team to deeply cover the intersection of business and technology across the Extended Brewniverse.
To kick off this new endeavor, our whole crew is headed to Las Vegas for CES 2026. Unlike in years past, we haven’t scheduled back-to-back meetings and jammed our calendars full of demos. We’ve penciled in a few test runs and plan to attend a few panels, sure, but we’re mostly just going to walk around and see what intrigues us to gather string for our reporting in the New Year.
Here’s what we’ll have our eyes on.
Keep reading here.—PK, JG, TC, AS
From The Crew
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You’ll come away from each episode of Brew Markets able to ask the questions that help you strengthen your market knowledge. Listen now.
GREEN TECH
Better in color
Pixel-Shot / Adobe Stock
Titanium dioxide’s journey from the Earth’s crust to our lips is a long one.
The food additive—which is used in foods like candy, cottage cheese, and frosting—starts as a metal found in a handful of minerals. It’s mined via earth blasting and drilling, and then processed into titanium dioxide. Once in the form of a fine, white powder, it can be added as a pigment to foods to make them look brighter and more opaque.
The EU banned titanium dioxide in 2022 because there wasn’t enough evidence to prove it wasn’t toxic, but the US Food and Drug Administration allows it to be used in foods in quantities up to 1% of a product’s weight. Beyond its toxic uncertainty, the presence and use of titanium dioxide has far-reaching effects: Mining and processing the material is carbon-intensive, and creating it synthetically generates emissions, too.
That’s why Mirra is working to replace titanium dioxide and petroleum-based food dyes using structural color, a physical process found in nature (think the vibrant colors of butterflies and birds). The team of scientists and innovators recently won the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center’s Climatetech Studio Showcase with technology they originated at Northeastern University. According to COO Elizabeth Bridges, Mirra will be able to better color foods than alternative food dyes, which tend to fade in the harsh conditions of food processing, like high temperatures, UV exposure, and changing pH levels.
“We’re really focused on taking vegetables and foods and using them as food dyes,” Bridges said, “in a way that allows the food industry to continue the level of vibrant color and conditions that they’re using in their products today.”
AI
Surgical approach
PhonlamaiPhoto/Getty Images
From transcontinental telesurgery to AI-powered procedures, tech is reshaping how and where surgery happens.
Robot-assisted surgery, which allows physicians to control a mechanical arm equipped with surgical instruments and a high-definition camera, has been a big part of this transformation.
The first robot platform was used on a human patient in 1985, though the field didn’t really take off until Intuitive Surgical’s da Vinci system for minimally invasive surgery launched in 2000. By 2018, 15.1% of US general surgery procedures involved robotic surgery, a 2020 JAMA Network Open study found.
Some studies suggest this technology makes minimally invasive surgery easier for physicians, reduces the length of hospital stays, and improves patient outcomes for procedures like prostatectomies and pancreatectomies. Countries including the UK are working toward using it for most minimally invasive surgeries, according to a June statement from the National Health Service in England.
But some experts question the cost effectiveness of robotic surgical systems.
Keep reading on Healthcare Brew.—CC
BITS AND BYTES
Stat: At least 80. That’s how many pages related to the climate crisis were deleted from the Environmental Protection Agency’s website as of early December, Grist reported.
Quote: “It’s funny, but actually it’s super scary…If I can do that, and I’m not a super technical person, you can imagine that if you are more familiar with the technologies, that you can scale that up super fast. And you can start harvesting data from Instagram, data from Facebook.”—Reinhard Hochrieser, Jumio SVP of product and technology, to IT Brew about the ease with which he created a deepfake of one of his colleagues
Read: Tech bros head to etiquette camp as Silicon Valley levels up its style (The Washington Post)
Written by Patrick Kulp, Jordyn Grzelewski, Tricia Crimmins, Annie Saunders, and Caroline Catherman