Microsoft and Nvidia are teaming up on a supercharged AI laptop

By Christine Ji

Powered by Nvidia's RTX Spark chip, the latest Windows laptop is designed to run AI models and workloads directly on the device

The Surface Laptop Ultra starts at $2,599.

On Wednesday, Microsoft and Nvidia unveiled the Surface Laptop Ultra, a personal computer the companies say is designed for artificial-intelligence workloads.

"We have reinvented the computer as we know it," Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang said on stage during the launch event in San Francisco.

The Microsoft (MSFT) laptop is powered by Nvidia's RTX Spark chip, which Nvidia announced in May. The RTX Spark is a central processing unit specialized for AI workloads like coding and consumer agents, gaming and other intensive tasks. The "superchip" allows users to run complex tasks directly on their own hardware and is optimized to allow for switching between multiple AI models.

For example, users can run MAI Code 1.1 Flash, Microsoft AI's lightweight coding model, directly on the device. Meta's (META) Muse AI agent is also coming to Windows as a native app.

To support these capabilities, the top-tier configuration of the Surface Laptop Ultra boasts 128 gigabytes of unified memory and 1 petaflop of AI processing power. A petaflop is a measure of processing speed that means the computer can perform 1 quadrillion calculations per second.

The laptop offers up to 4.3 times faster image generation and 6.2 times faster video generation than Apple's (AAPL) MacBook Pro M5 Pro, Microsoft said. Shipments of the laptop, whose base configuration is priced at $2,599, are set to start on Oct. 16.

Locally run AI workloads will allow users to have greater control over their data, Microsoft said. Cybersecurity was a main focus of the product launch, with Microsoft announcing a variety of features to ensure governance and accountability for AI agents, which are bots that can act on a user's behalf.

Agents need a "distinct identity and permissions that are separate from the user," Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft's executive vice president of Windows and Devices, said during the launch event. The company's Windows Microsoft Execution Containers, which are specifically designed to sandbox autonomous AI agents with untrusted code, are now in general availability in Windows 11.

Microsoft Copilot is getting an upgrade as well with Hybrid Intelligence, which splits workloads between cloud and on-device computing. This allows users to avoiding sending sensitive information to the cloud. Hybrid Intelligence features will be rolling out over the next few months, the company said.

-Christine Ji

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10-07-26 1512ET