Microsoft (MS) and NVIDIA Corporation take on Apple Inc.'s MacBook with AI-enhanced laptops

[Financial News]  Microsoft (MS) and NVIDIA Corporation have unveiled high-performance laptops that can reduce reliance on the cloud and handle complex artificial intelligence (AI) tasks directly on the PC.
According to foreign media reports on the 7th (local time), the two companies introduced their new product, the Surface Laptop Ultra, at an event in San Francisco, United States. MS CEO Satya Nadella and NVIDIA Corporation CEO Jensen Huang took the stage together that day, showcasing the strength of their companies' AI partnership.
The new product is equipped with NVIDIA Corporation's next-generation RTX Spark chip and is designed for professional users, including developers and creators who need to perform large-scale AI workloads. MS plans to transform the Windows platform from a simple operating system (OS) into a platform where autonomous AI agents can write code and carry out complex projects directly in a local environment. As a result, a substantial share of computing tasks currently performed on MS Azure's cloud infrastructure is expected to shift to high-performance PCs in businesses and homes.
The RTX Spark architecture in the Surface Laptop Ultra combines a Blackwell RTX GPU, a Grace CPU and unified memory in a single design. MS said, “It can run AI models with 120 billion (120B) or more parameters locally and deliver up to 1 petaflop (PFLOPS) of AI computing performance.”
MS's AI assistant system, Microsoft Copilot, also streamlines how workloads are divided between local hardware and the cloud. Tasks that are sensitive from a security standpoint or costly to run are handled on the PC itself. In addition, NVIDIA Corporation's Nemotron model runs locally, while Meta's AI personal assistant, Muse, is also included as a native Windows app. This is expected to significantly strengthen privacy protections while reducing the amount of data sent to cloud servers, substantially lowering cloud costs for businesses and individuals.
Security technology has also been significantly strengthened. MS has introduced a new technology called the MS Execution Container (MXC), which restricts AI agents' access to data. It is intended to prevent autonomous AI systems from accessing sensitive information without authorization or carrying out unapproved actions. CEO Nadella stressed, “We needed to make the desktop the safest place for AI agents to run,” while CEO Huang also described the security technology as a very important advance in deploying AI agents on PCs. Major AI companies, including OpenAI, NVIDIA Corporation and Anthropic, are expected to adopt MXC technology.

With this launch, MS and NVIDIA Corporation have narrowed the gap with Apple Inc., which commands the high-performance PC market, while establishing themselves as direct competitors. Although the base model of the Surface Laptop Ultra costs more than the base model of Apple's MacBook Pro, a fierce battle for leadership is expected in the market for professional developers and prosumers seeking to run AI models directly on their PCs.
For NVIDIA Corporation, this product also marks an expansion into the Windows PC market traditionally monopolized by Intel and AMD. MS believes powerful local hardware will complement cloud AI rather than replace it.

[email protected] Yoon Jae-jun Reporter