Nvidia and Microsoft Unveil RTX Spark and Surface Laptop Ultra to Reinvent the PC for AI Agents

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella introduced the 'unlimited intelligence' idea at Build 2026. According to the report, he said cloud AI remains important, but its use is limited by billing for tokens, API calls and GPU time. By contrast, CPU, GPU and NPU capacity already purchased by users has a marginal cost close to zero, ignoring electricity and depreciation. A one-time purchase, in that view, allows users to call on AI around the clock without multiple subscriptions or waiting for usage resets. Microsoft presents the PC as a potential new AI infrastructure.

RTX Spark is Nvidia's answer. The Verge reported that the collaboration began in early 2024 and took about two and a half years. The platform is an Arm-based system-on-chip that combines CPU, GPU and up to 128GB of unified memory. Nvidia worked with MediaTek to bring a custom Grace CPU to mainstream Windows devices for the first time. The company said RTX Spark offers up to 1 PFLOP of FP4 AI compute, can run local models such as the 125-billion-parameter Qwen 3.8 Flash Next, and supports ray tracing, DLSS and CUDA. The report described it as a personal computing node capable of carrying Agent workloads.

The new Copilot+ PC pitch marks a shift. When Microsoft introduced Copilot+ PC in 2024, it focused on NPUs with more than 40 TOPS running small local models for privacy-sensitive tasks such as photo processing and translation. With NPUs finding limited uses, Microsoft is now turning to Nvidia for more powerful local intelligence. The company wants programming, Office work, video and image editing, and personal file management to be tied to a local Copilot Agent. In this 'dual operating system' narrative, Windows remains the base operating system for CPU, GPU, files, windows and permissions, while Copilot Agent becomes a task operating system that coordinates work.

Microsoft also introduced the Surface Laptop Ultra as the first showcase device. It has a CNC unibody aluminum design, a large trackpad and a 15-inch 3:2 Mini-LED high-refresh display with 262 PPI. Ports include three USB4, HDMI, USB-A, an SD card slot and a 3.5mm headphone jack. A new Magnetic Connect design puts a smaller charging head into a standard USB-C port, relying on surrounding magnets so the cable detaches under force without a proprietary connector. The laptop weighs about 2 kilograms, between the 14-inch MacBook Pro at 1.62 kilograms and the 16-inch model at 2.1 kilograms.

With up to 128GB of unified memory from RTX Spark, the Surface Laptop Ultra is positioned to run large local models. It can also use Nvidia's DLSS, CUDA acceleration and G-SYNC, giving it an advantage in compatibility with existing tools compared with MacBooks and Qualcomm laptops, according to the report. In a demonstration, a creator linked an AI Agent with Photoshop, Blender, Premiere and other professional software into a locally running toolchain. Target users include AI developers, programmers, creators and professional users who now rely on MacBook Pros. The device also ran the newly released Gears of War: E-Day, and supported titles include League of Legends, Valorant, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 and Cyberpunk 2077, with Call of Duty to join next year.

The Surface Laptop Ultra will go on sale on October 16. The base version costs $2,599.99, and the top configuration with 128GB of memory costs $5,899.99. Lenovo, Asus, Dell, HP and MSI are expected to release their own RTX Spark laptops in the coming months; the report said differences may be mostly in appearance rather than price because of component costs. Microsoft and Nvidia also showed the RTX Spark Dev Box, a development console that resembles an Xbox and starts at $5,999, and the DGX Station for Windows, a desktop supercomputer with 20 times the AI compute of RTX Spark and no announced price.

Beyond hardware, Microsoft is pushing Windows toward becoming an Agent platform. The event spent its first half hour largely on MXC, or Microsoft Execution Containers, a security sandbox for controlling the permission boundaries of local AI Agents. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said PC use over the past 40 years was defined by clicking and typing, while the new PC would take a user's request and complete the work. At the June GTC event, he said the PC reconstruction was comparable in importance to the birth of the smartphone, and promised new desktop, laptop and workstation products for every future architecture if Microsoft continues the plan. The report noted that Microsoft has abandoned past initiatives such as UWP unification, Windows 10 as the last version of Windows, and Windows 10X, leaving questions about whether the AI-era overhaul will be carried through.

Editor's Summary Microsoft and Nvidia have unveiled RTX Spark and the Surface Laptop Ultra, a combination aimed at running local AI agents with up to 128GB of unified memory and 1 PFLOP of FP4 compute. The Surface Laptop Ultra starts at $2,599.99 on October 16, while OEM laptops and desktop systems are also planned. Microsoft is also repositioning Windows as an Agent platform, though its history of shelved projects leaves execution uncertain.