Microsoft held its first major Windows event in over two years on Wednesday in San Francisco, with CEO Satya Nadella and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on stage. The headline device: the Surface Laptop Ultra, a 'builder tier' laptop powered by Nvidia's RTX Spark chip that Microsoft positions as the best machine for running local AI models. The company claims it outperforms the MacBook Pro with an M5 Pro chip in several AI workloads and can run AI models exceeding 120 billion parameters locally, thanks to up to 128GB of unified memory.

Pre-orders opened immediately at $2,599, with shipping starting October 16. Other RTX Spark laptops from Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and MSI were shown alongside it. Microsoft also announced a $5,999 Surface RTX Spark Dev Box for developers running open-weight models, shipping to U.S. customers in November, and deskside DGX Station-class systems for running frontier-class models locally later in 2026.

The event was as much about Nadella's bet that some work currently done in Azure's data centers can shift to powerful Windows machines in businesses and homes. Deskside systems powered by Nvidia DGX Station, which Microsoft says can run frontier-class models at more than a trillion parameters locally, are due on Windows later this year.

The laptops are now actually on sale. NVIDIA's October 17 launch post puts RTX Spark laptops from ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft and MSI in stores starting at $2,399 — $200 under the Surface Laptop Ultra's starting price — still with up to 128GB of unified memory and up to 1 petaflop of AI performance, with more systems to follow.