Microsoft debuts $2,599 Surface Laptop Ultra

Microsoft unveiled its Surface Laptop Ultra at an event in San Francisco, California, on Wednesday. Starting at $2,599, the device is Microsoft's most powerful Surface to date and is designed to compete with Apple's MacBook Pro laptops for artificial intelligence tasks, video workloads, and gaming.

The laptop runs on an Arm-based Nvidia RTX Spark processor. Microsoft executive vice president of Windows and devices Pavan Davuluri stated that the chip features up to 128GB of unified memory, allowing it to execute demanding AI models locally.

Microsoft claimed the new laptop delivers 4.3 times faster AI image generation and 6.2 times faster video generation than a MacBook Pro powered by Apple's M5 Pro chip. In a demonstration, the company showed the computer running the game Gears of War: E Day, GitHub Copilot, and video editing software DaVinci Resolve simultaneously.

Davuluri also announced that Microsoft is introducing hybrid AI features and AI agent security to Windows through software updates. Tom Mainelli, IDC's group vice president of device and consumer research, told Yahoo Finance that the high-end device will likely appeal to early adopters across consumer and enterprise markets as users manage local versus cloud processing.

The release comes as the PC industry faces ongoing shortages of memory and storage chips. While these constraints have pushed device prices higher across the sector and weighed on total unit sales, higher retail prices have so far cushioned hardware makers from steeper revenue declines.