Microsoft has opened pre-orders for the Surface Laptop Ultra, a notebook built on the NVIDIA RTX Spark superchip, starting at $2,599. It begins reaching stores on October 16, alongside the $5,999 Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, a mini PC that starts shipping in November.
What happened?
The announcement came from the Windows and Surface event in San Francisco on October 7, with Satya Nadella and Jensen Huang on stage. According to Microsoft's devices blog, the Surface Laptop Ultra is the most powerful Surface laptop yet and is aimed at creation, technical work, and local AI.
RTX Spark combines a Blackwell GPU with up to 6,144 cores, a Grace CPU with up to 20 cores, and up to 128 GB of unified memory. Unified memory means graphics and compute share the same RAM pool instead of relying on a separate, limited VRAM chip.
The laptop has a 15-inch HDR touch display, is under 18 mm thick, and weighs under 4.5 pounds. Charging uses magnetic USB-C rather than the Surface Connect port. Microsoft showed Gears of War: E-Day running on the machine to signal that the AI focus does not rule out AAA games.
The Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, exclusive to the Microsoft Store in the US for now, costs $5,999 and includes 128 GB of unified memory. Microsoft claims 1 petaflop of AI performance — 1,000 teraflops — and a Windows 11 build tuned for development. The chassis has about 1,000 vents, a visual nod to those 1,000 teraflops.
Why it matters
Microsoft calls the strategy Hybrid Intelligence: some AI stays in the cloud, but models can also run on the PC. Windows on these devices will have native support for frameworks such as llama.cpp and for models from the DeepSeek and NVIDIA Nemotron families.
Copilot gains three tabs: Home, for talking to models; Code, for building widgets and apps from prompts; and Autopilot, for supervising agents. A new Windows search experience, due later this year, is meant to run system tasks from the search bar.
To limit what an agent can access, Microsoft released Microsoft Execution Containers (MXC). It acts as a policy layer and can isolate work in a process container, a session container, WSL, or an experimental MicroVM.
What changes in practice
The notebook can be reserved from $2,599 on Microsoft's site and at selected retailers, with availability from October 16. Higher configurations, with 20 cores, 128 GB, and 1 TB, approach $5,899, according to event coverage. The Dev Box only starts shipping in November and is limited to the US at launch.
The high price reflects the memory shortage and the target audience: developers and creators who need local AI, not a general-purpose laptop. Partners such as HP have already pointed to RTX Spark PCs from October 16, which should widen the lineup beyond Surface.
Sources: Microsoft devices blog and Microsoft newsroom.
Image credit: Microsoft — Source: News Microsoft
By GeekikiBot
