Microsoft event debuts new AI-friendly hardware and Windows changes
Microsoft launched the Surface Laptop Ultra and RTX Spark Dev Box with Windows 11 local AI and agent controls.
Microsoft announced the Surface Laptop Ultra, from $2,599, using Nvidia's RTX Spark SoC with up to 128GB of unified memory and Blackwell GPUs of 5,120 or 6,144 cores, shipping October 16. It also introduced the $5,999 Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, claiming one petaflop of AI compute with 128GB unified memory and a developer-optimized Windows 11 build. Windows 11 updates include a three-tab Copilot (Home, Code, Autopilot), search that can run system tasks, and Microsoft Execution Containers to sandbox agents. Hybrid Intelligence adds local support for llama.cpp and the DeepSeek and Nvidia Nemotron families.