Microsoft and Nvidia will take the stage in San Francisco on Wednesday to unveil the Surface Laptop Ultra, a new Windows machine powered by Nvidia's RTX Spark chips designed to run artificial intelligence agents directly on the device without relying on cloud computing.
Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella and his Nvidia counterpart Jensen Huang will jointly introduce the laptop at an event billed as an update on Windows and Microsoft's Surface hardware line.
The machine is designed to handle complex AI tasks such as writing code and managing business projects locally, reducing dependence on Microsoft's Azure cloud infrastructure and shifting the cost of the underlying hardware to the customer.
For Nvidia, a successful launch would open up the Windows PC market, one of the few significant computing segments still dominated by rivals Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).
However, analysts say pricing is the central challenge facing both companies.
When Microsoft first pitched the idea of local AI computing two years ago, the target machines were priced below $2,000.
Since then, a shortage of high-capacity memory chips has driven costs sharply higher: Nvidia recently raised the price of its DGX Spark AI desktop by around 75% to $6,950, reflecting surging costs for the 128 gigabytes of memory such systems require.
"Two years ago the software wasn't ready, but the hardware was," said Anshel Sag, analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. "Now the software is ready and the hardware is too expensive to actually run it locally."
Apple is pursuing the same market with its latest Mac computers.
