Surface Laptop Ultra debuts with new Windows AI tools

For the first time in two years, Microsoft held a live event. Ars Technica covered the announcements, which included a new Surface laptop, a developer box, and Windows updates focused on local AI.

The Surface Laptop Ultra starts at $2,599 and uses Nvidia's RTX Spark SoC. Ars Technica reports it comes with either a 5120-core or 6144-core Blackwell GPU and up to 128GB of unified memory. Microsoft showed the laptop running Gears of War: E-Day, showing the unified memory can handle AAA gaming along with AI development. Pre-orders are open now, and shipping begins October 16.

For developers needing more power, the RTX Spark Dev Box costs $5,999. Ars Technica notes it offers one petaflop of AI compute performance with 128GB of unified memory and a custom Windows 11 build for AI development. The design is similar to a game console, with a vent pattern reminiscent of the Xbox Series X. The 1,000 chassis air vents are a nod to the 1,000 teraflops of AI performance, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft also detailed Windows 11 changes. The Copilot assistant is getting a major overhaul with a three-tab layout (specific tab names were not shared). Users can run system tasks from the search bar instead of using Control Panel. Ars Technica reports that Microsoft Execution Containers (MXC) provide a sandbox for AI agents, letting administrators set guardrails. MXC can shift between different container types, including a hardware-backed MicroVM isolation. This local-AI focus is called Hybrid Intelligence, supporting frameworks like llama.cpp and models from Deepseek and Nvidia Nemotron.

Ars Technica notes that security and user acceptance remain open questions given past AI agent issues. The Surface Laptop Ultra ships next week, and we will review it to help you decide if the $2,599 entry price is worth it for the local AI features.

• AI
• Copilot
• Microsoft
• RTX Spark Dev Box
• Surface Laptop Ultra
• Windows 11