Microsoft's $2,599 Surface Laptop Ultra ships Oct. 16

Microsoft first talked about the Surface Laptop Ultra in May, but is just now providing specifics, including the $2,599 starting price and an Oct. 16 ship date. The device carries an Nvidia Blackwell RTX Spark GPU that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said has as much processing power as Nvidia's DGX-1 data center server from 2016, which cost $250 million.

At the same event, Davuluri said Meta will introduce a version of its Muse AI agent for Windows, a personal agent that has jumped to the top of Apple's App store, surpassing ChatGPT. Microsoft is still trying to solidify its role as a key player in AI; its own models are less popular than leading models from OpenAI and Anthropic, and developers are more likely to have used alternatives, according to a recent survey.

This isn't Microsoft's first attempt to use the AI boom to boost device sales. In 2024 it introduced the Copilot+ PC standard, requiring neural processing units, and a spokesperson said the company has since simplified product naming to lead with the Surface brand. Whether the Ultra changes Microsoft's standing among PC vendors, where Gartner does not place it in the top six by unit shipments, may hinge on whether buyers see local AI workloads as worth the $2,599 outlay.