Microsoft stated that its new laptops equipped with the NVIDIA AI chip have a starting price of $2,599. The software giant is attempting to bring more artificial intelligence capabilities to consumer-facing devices.
Microsoft Windows and Executive Vice President of Devices, Pavan Davuluri, stated at a company event held in San Francisco on Wednesday that Surface Laptop Ultra is now available for reservation and will begin shipping on October 16th. This computer is equipped with a magnetic USB-C interface, similar to Apple's MagSafe charging connector.
Although Microsoft Windows is the most popular operating system on personal computers, according to estimates by research institution Gartner, it does not rank among the top six PC manufacturers in terms of shipments. As the AI trend gradually matures and chip technology continues to advance, tech giants including Microsoft, Apple, and Google are working to enable users to run more AI workloads on their devices rather than relying on the cloud.
Users can install and run a variety of models on this new notebook without having to worry about monthly bills skyrocketing. Microsoft first mentioned Surface Laptop Ultra in May, but it is only now that specific details have been announced.
Analyst Max Weinbach wrote on X: 'Microsoft might be able to bring me back to Windows.'
Davuluri also indicates that Meta will launch a Windows version of its popular Muse AI proxy. This move takes advantage of the growing popularity of personal proxies; the product has now risen to the top of Apple's App Store rankings, surpassing ChatGPT.
Microsoft is still working hard to consolidate its key position in the AI field. The company offers its own AI models, but according to a benchmark test, these models are not as popular as the leading models from OpenAI and Anthropic, and their performance is also not among the top. According to a recent survey, developers are more likely to use other alternative solutions.
This is not the first time Microsoft has attempted to leverage the AI craze to boost its device sales.
In 2024, the company introduced the Copilot + PC standard, requiring devices to be equipped with neural processing units in order to provide a minimum level of AI performance, and also launched Surface computers that met these standards. However, Microsoft later "simplified its product naming, focusing mainly on the Surface brand, while continuing to offer high-end hardware and a hybrid AI experience," said a spokesperson.
This new device can be equipped with up to 128GB of unified memory and offers a computing power of up to 1 petaflop. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang stated at a event on Wednesday that the computing power of this computer is comparable to that of NVIDIA's DGX-1 data center servers from 2016, which cost $250 million at the time.
A presenter demonstrated how an application on Surface Laptop Ultra could route some AI programming requests to run locally on the computer's GPU, with a green leaf icon appearing on the screen for those requests, while other requests were sent to the cloud. Through Windows 11, developers can limit the programming proxy to within Microsoft Execution Containers to prevent unnecessary system access.
Microsoft is updating the settings experience for Windows on 11 devices to help users get started more quickly with the open-source OpenClaw AI proxy software.
Since 2012, Microsoft has been releasing its own computers. CEO Satya Nadella stated on Tuesday that the company's positioning in the market is evolving.
Nadella said at the event, "I believe today is the day we begin to discuss and contemplate the frontier ecosystems. Perhaps in two years, five years, or ten years, their contours will appear slightly different. That classic edge—distributed computing, which will always remain distributed—will become even more real."
