Microsoft (MSFT.US) launches new flagship laptop! Equipped with Nvidia chips, certain AI tasks outperform Apple MacBook.

According to Jinse Finance, Microsoft (MSFT.US) held a Surface new product launch event on Wednesday, announcing the price and release schedule of its new flagship laptop, the Surface Laptop Ultra, equipped with an NVIDIA (NVDA.US) chip. The company claims that its performance surpasses Apple’s (AAPL.US) competing products in certain artificial intelligence (AI) tasks.

According to Microsoft executives on Wednesday, the Surface Laptop Ultra can process prompts at twice the speed of Apple’s MacBook Pro M5 when running local AI models, and generates videos at six times the speed of similar Apple devices. The Surface Laptop Ultra is now available for pre-order and will begin shipping on October 16; the starting price is $2,599, which is about $400 less than the entry-level 16-inch MacBook Pro.

This brand-new Surface device is built on a NVIDIA chip designed for Windows laptops, which supports both general computing and AI computing. This also opens a new field of competition for NVIDIA with mainstream general PC processor manufacturers such as Intel (INTC.US) and AMD (AMD.US).

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella appeared together on stage to discuss the development of this new PC chip. Jensen Huang stated, “We have completely reinvented the personal computer.” Other Windows-based PC manufacturers such as Dell Technologies (DELL.US) and HP (HPQ.US) have also developed devices equipped with the new NVIDIA chip.

This is not Microsoft’s first attempt to boost device sales by leveraging the AI boom. In the summer of 2024, Microsoft and partners such as Qualcomm (QCOM.US) launched a massive marketing campaign around AI-optimized PCs. At the time, Microsoft promised that such devices would integrate AI features directly and achieve this with more powerful chips based on Arm Holdings (ARM.US) designs. However, the launch of this product line was hampered by privacy concerns related to one of its flagship features, which was originally intended to provide users with a helpful operating history of the device.

With Apple desktop computers experiencing a surge in demand in recent years due to their strong AI model performance, Microsoft is striving to maintain the dominant position of the Windows operating system in the AI era. According to research estimates, even though Microsoft Windows is the most popular PC operating system, the company does not rank among the world’s top six PC manufacturers by shipment volume.

As advances in AI and chip technology continue, tech giants including Microsoft, Apple, and Google (GOOGL.US) are working to enable users to run AI workloads more locally on their devices instead of relying on the cloud. Nadella stated that as time goes on, both developers and users will expect AI tools to draw computing power from both local hardware and cloud services.

In addition, during the event, Microsoft executives outlined the advantages of using Windows for AI-related work. Developers can leverage the computing power of the new devices without paying cloud provider fees, saving costs and enhancing security. They also highlighted Windows security features, which can be used to monitor and control AI agents’ behavior. The company also announced that Meta (META.US) will launch a Windows version of its popular Muse AI agent to capitalize on the soaring popularity of this personal assistant—which has already surpassed ChatGPT to top the Apple App Store charts.