Microsoft Unveils the Surface Laptop Ultra at $2,599 and Pitches Windows as the Safest Place for AI Agents
At its San Francisco event, Microsoft and Nvidia priced their RTX Spark flagship, promised local AI models and agent containment in Windows, and lined up four rival laptops for the same Friday.
Outspoken Digest Technology Desk
Wednesday, October 7, 2026/2 min read
Satya Nadella opened Microsoft's Windows and Surface event from San Francisco on Wednesday by reflecting on what PCs mean, and the rest of the hour answered with two ideas: agents and trust. The hardware headline came about 40 minutes in. The Surface Laptop Ultra, built on Nvidia's RTX Spark chip, starts at $2,599, according to BGR's liveblog, and is available to pre-order now.
The event, announced in September with Nadella, Windows chief Pavan Davuluri and Nvidia's Jensen Huang as speakers, was expected to show off the laptop that Thurrott reported Microsoft first announced at Build in June. What was new was the price, the shipping date and a software pitch built around running AI on the machine itself.
What is the Surface Laptop Ultra, and what does it cost?
Microsoft calls it the most powerful Surface it has made. It has a 15-inch PixelSense Ultra touchscreen, is under 18 millimetres thick and under 4.5 pounds, and carries up to 128GB of unified memory and up to a petaflop of AI performance, BGR reports. Gizmodo notes that a magnetic USB-C charger takes the place of the Surface Connect port, puts the base price at about $2,600 and says shipping starts on 16 October. BGR adds that Microsoft also showed a developer mini PC, the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, at $5,999.
Microsoft's performance claims are its own. SlashGear's liveblog logged a comparison with the MacBook Pro of up to 2.1 times faster time to first token, 4.3 times faster image generation and 6.2 times faster video generation. Davuluri said Gears of War runs "awesome" on the machine, and that Call of Duty is coming to RTX Spark in 2027.
What did Microsoft announce for Windows and AI agents?
Security came first. Davuluri said Windows should be the most secure platform for agents, and BGR reports that Microsoft Execution Containers reaches general availability, with agent activity kept separate from the user's, Microsoft Defender flagging malicious prompts, and tools for organisations to see which agents are running and restrict them without locking out the user.
Then came what Microsoft calls Hybrid Intelligence, which routes work between local and cloud models. GitHub's HydraFusion will support models running locally on Windows and is due on 15 October, with DeepSeek V4 Flash able to run within 60GB of memory and Nvidia's Nemotron running on RTX Spark. Copilot gets a new home screen, can reach local files and take actions only with permission, and can build a native Windows app from a prompt. Perplexity will use local models for image galleries, and Meta's Muse agent is coming to Windows as a native app.
Which other laptops use the RTX Spark chip?
Not only Microsoft's. Lenovo, Asus, Dell, MSI and HP showed RTX Spark machines, BGR reports: the Yoga 9n, ProArt P14, XPS 16, Prestige N16 and OmniBook Ultra 16. All are available to pre-order and are due on Friday 16 October, the same day as Microsoft's own. Huang, who joined Nadella on stage, said Nvidia was founded because of Windows, citing Windows 95 and DirectX.
The event was still under way as this was published, and a Windows 12 announcement was not expected. The next date to watch is 15 October for HydraFusion, then 16 October, when the first RTX Spark laptops reach customers and the $2,599 price meets real shoppers.
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