Microsoft is bringing more AI to PCs, challenging Apple
Kyiv • UNN
Microsoft introduced a local AI model and Microsoft Execution Containers for the secure operation of agents on PCs. The Surface Ultra will cost from $2,599.
On October 7, Microsoft unveiled an artificial intelligence–based coding model that can run directly on personal computers, as well as a new security technology that prevents AI agents from accessing data without permission. This challenges Apple’s efforts to bring more artificial intelligence to personal devices. UNN reports, citing Reuters.
Details
The software company also unveiled a powerful Surface laptop called Ultra at an event in San Francisco, powered by Nvidia RTX Spark chips. Microsoft is seeking to turn Windows into a platform for AI agents to perform tasks such as writing computer code or carrying out complex business projects on desktop computers and laptops, the publication writes.
For Microsoft, the move is a bet that some of the work currently performed in expensive Azure cloud-computing data centers can be shifted to powerful Windows machines in companies and homes—a market where the company maintains its position and where its customers pay the hardware bills. This, it said, is a market opportunity that rival Apple is also pursuing with its new Mac computers.
For Nvidia, entering the Windows PC market could help it break into one of the last major markets dominated by Intel and Advanced Micro Devices.
As protection against increasingly autonomous AI agents that pose security risks, Microsoft announced the release of Microsoft Execution Containers—an tool that prevents agents from accessing data and performing unauthorized tasks while operating on a laptop or desktop computer. Anthropic, OpenAI, and Nvidia will use these tools, said Pavan Davuluri, executive vice president of Windows and Devices.
"We needed to make the desktop the safest place for agents to operate," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Davuluri said the new tools would allow IT departments to set rules for agents, while the Windows operating system would ensure those rules were enforced on each employee’s computer.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who joined Nadella onstage, said Microsoft’s new execution-container technology, abbreviated as MXC, "will revolutionize how agents are built and deployed."
"Without it, (agents) are a complete failure," he said.
Nvidia is trying to prevent a repeat of the hacking of the Hugging Face artificial intelligence center, while Apple is seeking to streamline the process of giving artificial intelligence agents full access to a Mac computer’s hard drive.
AI is "moving" to PCs
Microsoft also unveiled artificial intelligence models that previously required access to the cloud but can now run locally on powerful Windows desktops and laptops, including Nvidia’s open-source Nemotron model. Davuluri said that version V4 of the model from Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek can run on machines with at least 60 gigabytes of memory and outperform OpenAI’s GPT-5 in some coding and reasoning tasks.
Microsoft is taking a similar approach with its own artificial intelligence assistant, Copilot, dividing tasks between the cloud and individual laptops. "Copilot will still use the cloud for the most complex tasks, but in cases where cost or privacy matter more, it can delegate them to local models running directly on your computer," said Microsoft’s head of Copilot, Jacob Andreu.
Davuluri also said that Meta’s personal AI assistant, Muse, will appear on Windows devices as a native app, using some of Microsoft’s new security tools, and that OpenClaw, an open-source artificial intelligence agent system, can also work with these security tools.
The price question
One of the key problems facing Microsoft and Nvidia is the high prices of these devices after the memory-chip crisis drove them up.
The new Surface Laptop Ultra will cost from $2,599 and rise to $5,899 for a model with a 20-core processor, 128 gigabytes of memory and one terabyte of storage.
An Apple MacBook Pro with a 40-core graphics chip, 128 GB of memory and 2 TB of storage costs $6,700, although these machines cannot be directly compared. Microsoft's base Ultra costs more than Apple's base MacBook Pro, priced at $1,999, but comes with 24 GB of memory compared with 16 GB in Apple's base model.
When Microsoft first proposed the idea of running AI tasks on PCs two years ago to save costs, laptops mostly cost less than $2,000, but Nvidia has increased the price of an AI desktop computer called the DGX Spark by about 75% since its launch, to $6,950, due to rising memory costs.
Two years ago, "the software wasn't ready, but the hardware was. Now the software is ready, and the hardware is too expensive to run it locally," said Anshel Sag, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. "So it is becoming a situation where only people who have the budget can afford to run AI locally," he noted.