When the Future Looked West
Under the glow of towering LED screens at CES 2026, amid the usual swirl of futuristic demos and bold promises about artificial intelligence, one detail kept surfacing in conversations that week: Arizona. Not as a footnote. Not as an emerging market. But as a place where the next wave of AI-first companies might actually be built.
That idea crystallized when NovaWave Capital, a Silicon Valley–based venture firm backed by LG Electronics’ North America Innovation Center, LG NOVA, announced the launch of WaveX—an AI venture studio designed to incubate and scale startups across healthcare, energy, sports, and media. The studio would be rooted in Arizona, is supported by the Arizona Commerce Authority, AZ Venture Capital Inc., and Sunny Day Sports.
