When Microsoft launched Windows 11 five years ago, it felt like an operating system still being renovated, a work in progress. You would think by now that these renovations would be complete, with Microsoft turning its attention to Windows 12. Instead, Windows 11 appears to be here to stay, forming the basis of Microsoft’s next big ambition: turning Windows into an agent operating system.
At a Windows and Surface event this week, Microsoft outlined its plan to bring AI agents to Windows, including hybrid intelligence that lets Windows take advantage of free on-premises models instead of expensive cloud models. “I think today is the day where we will start talking and thinking about the border ecosystem that will perhaps take slightly different contours,” said the Microsoft CEO. Satya Nadella.
After trying to sell businesses on a new Copilot last month, Nadella took a similar approach for his vision of agents and hybrid intelligence for Windows. It was so similar that when he mentioned the security, identity, and management aspects of Microsoft’s platform for securing agents, it almost seemed like he was again pitching businesses instead of AI developers, creatives, and just regular Windows users.
After a somewhat dizzying start, the head of Windows Pavan Davuluri appeared on stage to try to explain why agents and hybrid intelligence are so important to Windows users. There have been demos of GitHub Copilot coding locally without expensive cloud tokens; a long list of models that can now be run locally; examples of agents like OpenClaw, Hermes and Perplexity; and even deeper integration of Copilot into Windows.
However, I wasn’t entirely convinced by any of these demos. I wanted to see what practical benefits local AI models could actually bring to regular Windows users, instead of just the AI builders or developers that Microsoft is trying to convince right now. These are the people, however, who could help bring his agentic operating system vision to life, and many of them use a MacBook Pro instead of Windows. Microsoft’s response to attract them to Windows? The Surface Laptop Ultra.
The Surface Laptop Ultra hosts Microsoft’s Agent operating system. Nvidia’s RTX Spark chips power the device, and the GPU’s raw power is enough for AI models exceeding 120 billion parameters to run locally. “We designed it for developers and creators who push the boundaries of performance and want exceptional portability,” Davuluri said.
The Surface Laptop Ultra is the flagship RTX Spark device, although there are also similar laptops from Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo and MSI. Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra starts at $2,599, and some RTX Spark PCs can go as high as $6,999. Much like the top-of-the-line MacBook Pro, you’d really need 128GB of unified memory to spend that kind of money. For many AI builders, it might be worth it, especially if you can save thousands of dollars in token costs.
For the rest of us, Microsoft had very little to show. A new Windows Search interface, however, looks to be one of the best additions to Windows 11 in years. Microsoft has completely redesigned search to make it not only more modern, but also much faster than before. It’s gotten to the point where I turn off Bing results in Windows Search, but this new UI now shows results inline and lets you use search more like a launcher.
I wasn’t expecting a big Windows 12 reveal at this event, but I was hoping to hear a lot more about why RTX Spark laptops really matter. “This is the future we are building: agents that can work securely on your behalf, information that flows seamlessly between on-premises and the cloud, and devices that become more capable than ever,” Davuluri said.
The problem is that Microsoft is still in the early stages of this future it is betting on for Windows. We got the Copilot Plus PCs two years ago, with a particular focus on the NPU chips inside that were supposed to revolutionize the way consumers use everyday AI on a laptop. They haven’t done it yet, with only a handful of photo, video, and productivity tools using the NPU. Microsoft’s Recall feature was supposed to be the star of the NPU show, but privacy concerns and a delayed launch made it completely irrelevant.
Nvidia’s presence and GPU dominance could well make RTX Spark a bigger success than the Copilot Plus PCs, but those machines are targeting a niche audience for now. If Microsoft and its partners want to move beyond selling themselves as competitors to the MacBook Pro, they will eventually need to bring the same features to cheaper, less powerful devices and demonstrate practical reasons for regular Windows users to care. The difference is that RTX Spark PCs are aimed at people who have a much more immediate reason to care about local AI: developers and creators who need to run large models and can potentially save substantial amounts of money by doing so.
For Microsoft, however, it’s the creators and builders who matter most right now. AI agents running in the cloud on Linux virtual machines could spark a wave of Linux desktop app compatibility that we’ve never seen before. Microsoft needs to counter this threat by making Windows more agent-friendly.
This could explain why Nadella and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang spent so much time reminiscing about the early days of PC and graphics at this event. Microsoft isn’t ready to give up the PC dominance and app compatibility it spent decades building. But he knows that the way people use computers is changing and that Windows can’t always rely on its historical advantages.
This perhaps explains why Microsoft seems to be pushing to adopt AI agents and hybrid intelligence in Windows. It must ensure that even as computing moves beyond the traditional PC, Windows remains at the center of everything.
I’m always eager to hear from readers, so feel free to leave a comment here, or you can reach me at notepad@theverge.com if you’d like to discuss anything else. If you’ve heard about any of Microsoft’s secret projects, you can reach me by email at notepad@theverge.com or talk to me confidentially on the Signal messaging app, where my name is tomwarren.01. I’m also Tomwarren on Telegram, if you prefer to chat there.
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