Available for pre-order and shipping Oct. 16, the laptop starts at $2,599 and is powered by Nvidia RTX Spark, which includes a Blackwell GPU and up to 128GB of unified memory. This hardware allows the 137B-parameter MAI-Code-1.1 Flash model to run locally, eliminating inference charges for routine coding in GitHub Copilot. Microsoft also introduced a $5,999 RTX Spark Dev Box shipping in November and made Microsoft Execution Containers generally available on Windows 11 to sandbox local AI agents.
Tuesday, October 20, 2026
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Microsoft's Surface Laptop Ultra Beats Apple M5 in AI Speed
AI13 days ago
The newest Surface Laptop Ultra produces AI images up to 4.3x faster than the laest MacBook Pro and cuts initial token response time by 2.1x, according to performance benchmarks revealed at a Microsoft event in San Francisco. The device acts as the hardware anchor for "Hybrid Intelligence," a new architectural approach that uses a model router to delegate AI agent tasks between on-device hardware and the cloud based on privacy needs and compute costs.
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