Right before the opening of CES 2025, Razer announced an absolute onslaught of new products, most of them with its ubiquitous Chroma RGB, and, to be honest, a few that I was really uncertain about going into the show. Namely, its concept gaming chair with built-in heating and cooling titled Project Arielle, and their AI esports coach dubbed Project Ava. After experiencing them both firsthand, I'm now a convert.

Project Arielle

Gamer chair, or the solution to office temperature issues?

A mesh gaming chair with built-in heating and cooling powered by a bladeless fan, Dyson-style, that glows with red and blue RGB to indicate temperature modes, and an as-yet-undisclosed power method. Sounds a bit gimmicky, right? At first glance, I wasn't sure how effective that would be or who would buy it, until I sat in it myself.

One of my first concerns was noise, but the chair was virtually silent. Perhaps it was because of the low buzz of voices in the room, but seeing as this was a private room, it wasn't really that crowded or loud. Sitting in the chair on cooling mode, I could feel the gentle breeze of cool air at the base of my neck and around my torso. The air vents are placed only on the back of the chair, not the headrest or the seat. The vents themselves are extremely subtle, thin slits embedded in the back of the chair's frame.

The touch controls on the side of the seat were unobtrusive in their design and simple to use. So far, I was impressed by the design and functionality, but I was still a little skeptical if wide-enough interest could be achieved to make this chair a reality. It wasn't until I tried the heating setting that Project Arielle's future clicked in my mind. I would have given anything to have this chair in the freezing corporate offices where I've worked before, and everyone I know who works in one would too.

It seems a safe bet that, should this chair live to see an actual product launch, it would be an expensive product, particularly in its first iterations. I wasn't seeing the commercial viability until the Razer representative and I discussed putting one of these behind every executive and mid-level desk in the country.

Perhaps a split into two models, one that removes the RGB for cost to achieve a better value proposition for office use, and a hero model with RGB for gamers looking to splurge on their comfort, particularly when your 50-series GPU starts heating up your room like a space-heater.

Project Ava

This is no gimmick, and Razer is investing heavily to prove it

I was led into a small, dimly lit room, and the first thing I noticed was it must have been 85 degrees in there. A huge server rack sat in the corner, and a Razer engineer was playing a MOBA that won't be named here, on which Project Ava, Razer's concept AI gaming coach, is being trained.

My first question, "Is this just a Large Language Model (LLM) that has been fed a ton of game guides?" was dispelled immediately. Project Ava is, in fact, a real investment that Razer hopes to turn into a deliverable product, built on a combination of proprietary tech and open-source APIs.

I watched as the Razer engineer worked his way through a lane, and Project Ava provided real-time feedback on how best to push, what items to buy, when to focus on farming, and more.

While playing, he used push-to-talk to ask Ava, "What items should I buy?" and, without missing a beat, Ava responded, "You are short on gold, focus on farming and optimizing your inventory," keeping him on task before he spends what little he has.

Razer wouldn't disclose what exactly was inside the server rack, but from the heat in the room and the whirring of fans, one could gather that it must be a boatload of powerful GPUs crunching some serious math. Obviously, most of us can't afford a server rack with who knows how many GPUs inside, so Razer told me they are aiming for a hybrid solution where some of the work is done locally on the machine and some on a cloud server. Release dates or pricing are yet to be announced.

Pushing the envelope

I appreciate that Razer is consistently trying to push the boundaries of gaming technology, and projects like Ava and Arielle show a lot of imagination and determination to stand out as a company that does more than just release an endless number of RGB Chroma accessories and peripherals. Time will tell if either project comes to market, but I personally hope they both go the distance.