The Wire · Microsoft
Copilot, Azure AI, and Microsoft's AI across its stack — what's shipping and what it means for builders.
OpenAI cut GPT-5.6 Luna API prices by 80% to $0.20 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output, while Terra fell 20% to $2 and $12. Fast mode gives Sol up to 2.5 times Standard speed at twice the price. OpenAI says Sol-assisted kernel work lowered serving cost by 20% and improved token-generation efficiency by more than 15%, while Luna delivers year-old frontier performance at roughly six cents per task-dollar and nearly nine times the speed. The edition connects cheaper models to Amazon's reported $1.8m, 860%-over-budget coding task, Gemini Robotics 2 whole-body control, Nscale's Anyscale acquisition and Okta's roughly $200m Permiso deal.
Microsoft today launched its first two NVIDIA RTX Spark-powered systems, the Surface Laptop Ultra and Surface RTX Spark Dev box. Aimed at developers and other professionals, the high-end systems offer a fresh face to NVIDIA and Microsoft's Arm ecosystem efforts The post Microsoft Launches Surface Laptop Ultra, Surface RTX Spark Dev Box appeared first on ServeTheHome .
Read full story →In its first live event in two years, Microsoft today announced its newest Surface laptop, outlined a host of changes coming to Windows 11, and shared a vision of how local-AI and agentic workflows could reshape personal computing for those in the dev community as well as home enthusiasts. Surface Laptop Ultra Originally teased in May 2026 , the new Surface Laptop Ultra will be Microsoft's first offering to take advantage of the new Nvidia RTX Spark SoC (system on a chip). The device has a starting price of $2,599, and comes in various SoC and memory configurations, with either a 5120-core or 6144-core Blackwell GPU and up to 128GB of LPDDR5x unified memory. It will begin shipping on October 16 and is available for pre-order now. While the new Ultra is clearly focused on the developer crowd, graphical performance was highlighted during the presentation to show off just how capable the laptop can be. By leaning on unified memory allocation rather than the physical VRAM limits of a traditional GPU, the laptop can assign its resources to handle modern gaming tasks as well as local AI development and deployment. The new Gears of War: E-Day was shown running on the system, meaning that even without a traditional gaming GPU, AAA titles are on the table. Read full article Comments
Read full story →Nvidia's RTX Spark is arriving soon, with devices shipping on Friday, October 16. Pre-orders for RTX Spark from brands like Asus, Microsoft, Lenovo, HP, and Dell are live now, including the new Surface Laptop Ultra . Additional devices will be available post-launch, including small form factor desktops. Further below, you'll find the full list of all available models in detail, but we also have more general links here: Pre-order RTX Spark devices at Best Buy Pre-order RTX Spark devices at B&H Pre-order Surface Laptop Ultra at Microsoft Best Buy has a limited lineup of devices to start, ranging from the Asus ProArt P14 with 24GB of memory for $2,599 up to the Surface Laptop Ultra with 48GB of memory for $3,999. If you want to scale up the RTX Spark's maximum 128GB of memory, you'll need to shop elsewhere. Nvidia RTX Spark 128GB and 64GB laptop pre-orders ProArt P16 RTX Spark: $4399.99 The Asus ProArt P16 is a 16-inch laptop with the RTX Spark chip, which includes the 20-core Grace CPU and a Blackwell GPU, along with up to 128GB of unified memory. View Deal Asus has the ProArt P16 available with either 64GB or 128GB of unified memory directly from its web store, starting at $4,499.99 for the 64GB configuration. If you upgrade to 128GB of unified memory, the laptop comes in at $6,999.99 with 2TB of storage. The HP OmniBook X 14 is a 14-inch laptop with the RTX Spark chip. It includes a 3K OLED touch display at a 120Hz refresh rate, along with up to 128GB of unified memory. View Deal The HP OmniBook Ultra 16 is a 16-inch laptop with the RTX Spark chip and supports up to 128GB of unified memory. View Deal HP has two models available directly in its web store, both of which support up to 128GB of unified memory (along with 64GB, 48GB, 32GB, and 24GB). Both models are significantly cheaper than the ProArt P16 with 128GB of unified memory. The OmniBook X comes in at $5,109, while the OmniBook Ultra runs $5,309, both with 1TB of storage. The two models are very similar, diff
Read full story →If you thought Windows Recall was creepy, buckle up. Microsoft is about to shoehorn even more AI into its desktop operating system, giving Copilot access to every file on your PC. But don't worry, Redmond insists it's totally secure and safe since the agents powering the functionality will run entirely on your PC — some of the time. Microsoft describes the new functionality, announced alongside a new Nvidia N1X powered Surface Laptop, as "hybrid intelligence." Built atop Microsoft's HydraFusion model router, Windows apps and Copilot features will soon be able to use local models when it makes sense and cloud-based models when it doesn't. For example, Windows might use a local model for simple or privacy-sensitive tasks, or decide complex or performance-sensitive requests need OpenAI's GPT-6 or Anthropic's Claude. Local agents will run in Microsoft's Execution Containers (MXCs), agent sandboxes with fine-grained permissions applied at runtime. According to Microsoft EVP of Windows and Devices Pavan Davuluri, MXCs mean Windows is now "the most secure platform for agents." (That claim will surely age well because models never escape their sandboxes and routers never misbehave.) To support this hybrid intelligence functionality, Microsoft is extending support for Windows ML, its inference framework built on the ONNX runtime, to Llama.cpp – one of the highest-performing inference engines for local AI inference. By adding support for Windows ML, Llama.cpp should be able to take advantage of a broader range of accelerators. Microsoft is rolling out its hybrid intelligence functionality to GitHub Copilot — its AI code assistant — next week and its Copilot app over the next few months. The new Copilot features look and sound suspiciously like OpenClaw in a business suit. Copilot's agentic functionality will not have access to your entire file system, opening the door to advanced search functionality and productivity tasks through integrations with Microsoft Office. In a demo
When OpenAI introduced dots last month, it pitched them as "always-on agents" running in their own cloud computer, but that may be overstating the readiness of the technology and of the people trying to use it. Presently, multiple users are reporting task failures and connection issues with their dots. Others have flagged cloud connectivity problems, dots that disappear, and dot refusals that appear to be related to abuse prevention. And the OpenAI Developer Community forum shows several similar concerns. OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment about the usage of dots. ABI Research argues that "AI claws" – always-on agents – will shape enterprise AI adoption. The biz sees "a market evolving from isolated assistants toward modular agent ecosystems built for longer-running, enterprise-grade automation." Despite the hiccups that have afflicted dots, some skepticism on social media forums, speculation that OpenAI rushed dots out in response to Meta Muse and Grok Bot, and security issues, dots have some enthusiastic users in addition to detractors who just don't see the point. They also have competition from companies and developers who believe they can deliver a similar service more affordably, with fewer restrictions. A company called Tawkit that makes an SDK called CopilotKit has released OpenDots. "OpenDots is completely open source and gives you the same thing [as OpenAI Dots] as a template you host yourself," the biz said in a post last week. "Bring any agent through AG-UI, use any OpenAI-compatible model, and make every part of it your own." The company previously released OpenMuse and OpenBot. These projects essentially separate the user interface, the AG-UI agent layer, and the backend to provide an alternative personal agent. This doesn't eliminate the token expense of whatever agent is deployed, but it does mean that OpenAI may not be doing the billing. Then there's a potentially lower cost option, called (confusingly) Open Dot, powered by AI models ru
Microsoft revealed the specs and price for its Surface Laptop Ultra, AI PCs that run on Nvidia chips that are designed to run AI models and agents.
Look out, Intel! Microsoft released its first Surface notebook powered by Nvidia's RTX Spark system-on-chip (SoC) during an event in San Francisco on Wednesday. The Surface Laptop Ultra is one of several new Copilot+ PCs powered by the N1X chip that Microsoft says is aimed at "builders," which are available for preorder starting today and expected to begin shipping next week. The machine is arguably the vehicle for a slew of new AI features including hybrid compute functionality that dynamically routes workloads to on-device or cloud models depending on factors like connectivity, privacy, cost, and complexity. The aluminum clad system largely keeps with Microsoft's existing design ethos. It features a high-res, 15-inch mini-LED display capable of reaching a peak brightness of 2,000 nits in Microsoft's signature 3:2 aspect ratio, a standard ten-keyless keyboard layout, haptic trackpad, and a slew of ports including one you won't find on a MacBook Pro. Connectivity includes three USB-C ports, including one equipped with magnets for MagSafe-like connectivity, full-size HDMI, an SD card reader, and a solitary USB-A port because after more than a decade still can't shake the aging connector. But arguably the notebook's most interesting feature is the inclusion of Nvidia's RTX Spark N1X SoC. As we reported earlier this year, these aren't exactly new chips. The N1X is based heavily on Nvidia's now year-old GB10 platform, with a few CPU and GPU cores fused off on lower end models to meet pricing. This tells us that the Surface Laptop Ultra should ship with either an 18- or 20-core CPU designed by MediaTek and Arm and an Nvidia Blackwell-based RTX GPU with between 5,120 and 6,144 cores. In terms of memory, Microsoft says the notebook can be equipped with up to 128 GB of memory, enough to serve large language models up to 284 billion parameters in size, if you can live with just 1.6 bits of precision. As we've previously covered, the GPU is a pretty potent one with a peak the
Months after revealing its Surface Laptop Ultra, Microsoft has announced that the Nvidia RTX Spark-equipped device will launch on October 16th. Pricing starts at $2,599 for the base configuration, featuring an 18-core CPU, 24GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. The Surface Laptop Ultra ships with a 15-inch HDR touchscreen display with up to 2,000 […]
Microsoft has created a magnetic charging solution for its Surface Laptop Ultra that uses USB-C. After scrapping its proprietary Surface Connect magnetic charging on its smaller Surface devices last year, the Surface Laptop Ultra has a charging cable that attaches magnetically to the right-side USB-C port. During Microsoft's Windows event on Wednesday, Windows and Surface […]
We're in San Francisco today to hear what's next for Windows and Surface. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Windows and Surface chief Pavan Davuluri will all be holding a "conversation on how local AI will shape the next chapter of the PC." Microsoft and Nvidia have been working together on the […]
Sony doesn’t have a lot of love going its way among gamers right now, especially among the PC crowd, between the decision to abandon physical disc sales and reportedly shelve ports of its games to PC. Sony makes an excellent controller with the DualSense, not only for the PS5, but also for PC, with native support for its features (such as adaptive triggers) in some games. Still, it doesn’t feel great spending $74 on a controller if you don’t particularly align with Sony’s recent decisions, especially considering there are several other excellent controllers that either cost less or pack more features (and sometimes both). Although there’s some impressive tech in the DualSense, it’s missing a lot of features that are now commonplace among third-party controllers, notably, TMR joysticks, additional rear paddle buttons, and multiple onboard controller profiles — you’ll need to spend $200 on the DualSense Edge for that. All of the controllers below come with those modern conveniences, as well as dedicated software for profile management and button remapping. All except one also use a 2.4GHz connection, allowing you to use the controller wirelessly with virtually any device, and without the latency implications or connection limitations of Bluetooth. The controller for most PC gamers: GameSir G7 Pro (Image credit: Tom's Hardware) The GameSir G7 Pro is a pro-style controller without the extra luggage, literally. As more tech gets packed into controllers, they get heavier, which is an issue with the standard DualSense and, to a far greater extent, the Xbox Elite Controller (any version, really) and the DualSense Edge . With the G7 Pro, you get extra amenities like remappable buttons (including rear paddles), a charging dock, a 2.4 GHz connection, and a surprising number of different aesthetic variants. The primary difference is that the G7 Pro feels like a normal controller in your hands, and it’s less than half the price of the first-party options from Sony and Microsoft.
Businesses continue to refresh laptops more frequently, with the average laptop refresh cycle falling to four years in 2025, according to Sage . And while Black Friday is typically a shopping window associated with consumer tech, it’s also a great time for businesses to snap up a good deal to upgrade their business laptops. TL;DR Black Friday deals promise big cost savings, but if you pick the wrong devices you may end up with a product ill-suited to your needs Knowing what you want and need from a laptop before buying is key to getting a good deal, even on Black Friday The Dell Pro 3 and Dell Pro 5 offer a strong mix of performance and connectivity, with excellent displays, long battery life, and strong security credentials With laptops catering to lightweight workloads and more demanding tasks, the Dell Pro lineup is well suited to a range of business needs and sizes As tempting as the cheapest models are, they rarely offer the best long-term value for growing businesses. In fact, Microsoft research shows almost a quarter (24%) of IT decision-makers said choosing cheaper hardware ultimately led to higher long-term costs through breakdowns and inefficiencies. For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) concerned about making the right laptop decision, there are several key considerations: Performance needs : Choose devices that can handle the unique workloads of you and your employees. Battery life : Choose laptops that provide employees with juice to last a full working day, whether traveling, in meetings, or off-site. Security features : SMBs are just as vulnerable as large enterprises. Protect company data and employee credentials with built-in security. Ports selection : Make it easy for employees to connect monitors, peripherals, or other everyday equipment. Display : Choose a display that suits your team’s unique needs, from everyday office tasks to creative work, and data analysis to customer presentations. Wireless and cellular connectivity : Give your peo
arXiv:2610.02281v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Societal resilience research relies on access to useful and actionable data, which motivates our main research question: Can annual reports, processed at scale with LLMs, provide a useful signal about how companies disclose their response to AI? We test this by applying a reproducible two-stage classification pipeline to 9,821 annual reports from 1,362 UK listed companies (2020-2025, with partial 2026 data). We first validate the method against 474 human-annotated passages, finding high recall and moderate label-level agreement. We then report three empirical patterns: (i) between 2020 and 2025, the share of reports mentioning AI risk rose from 2.8% to 41.2%, while AI adoption disclosure also rose, from 13.8% to 45.2%, and named vendor mentions cluster around a small set of major providers led by Microsoft; (ii) disclosure varies substantially by Critical National Infrastructure sector and market segment: AIM reports disclose AI risk at far lower rates than Main Market reports, and sectors such as Energy and Data Infrastructure lag behind the rest in AI risk disclosure; and (iii) harm disclosures are near-absent (seven reports across the entire corpus). We develop a substantiveness classification to assess the quality of the disclosure and find that most AI risk disclosure is not substantive: in 2025, 41.2% of all reports mention AI as a risk, but only 4.3% contain AI risk disclosure we classify as substantive.
<p data-block-key="ymqk5">Follows Microsoft's footsteps</p>
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