Microsoft Launches $2,599 Surface Laptop Ultra on Nvidia's RTX Spark Chip, Pitching It Against the MacBook Pro

MSFT introduced the Surface Laptop Ultra at a Windows and Surface event, a 15-inch mini-LED laptop starting at $2,599 and built on NVDA's RTX Spark chip. The Arm-based chip combines a Blackwell GPU with up to 6,144 cores and a Grace CPU with 18 or 20 cores, and the top configuration carries up to 128GB of unified memory. The laptop runs Windows on Arm, using Microsoft's Prism emulation for x86 apps, and adds what Microsoft calls the first built-in magnetic USB-C charging on a laptop. Preorders opened October 7, with shipping from October 16.

The pitch is local AI. Microsoft says the machine runs AI models on the device rather than in the cloud and is aimed at creative, development and engineering workloads. It claims the laptop beats Apple's M5 MacBook Pro on AI tasks such as prompt processing and video generation; those figures come from Microsoft's own testing, not independent benchmarks. Pricing undercuts the 16-inch MacBook Pro, which MacRumors lists from $2,999. Alongside the laptop, Microsoft announced a Surface RTX Spark Dev Box at $5,999, shipping in November, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang joined Satya Nadella on stage in San Francisco.

For investors, the launch is a marker for Nvidia's push into Windows PCs with its own Arm CPU, a market long served by Intel, AMD and Qualcomm silicon, and for Microsoft's bet on on-device AI as a reason to upgrade. No source tied a stock move in either company to the event.

Watch independent reviews once units ship, whether OEM partners adopt RTX Spark in their own laptops, and how developer software runs under Windows on Arm and Prism emulation. The price point limits this to a premium niche at first, so the signal is less about unit volume than about whether the Nvidia and Windows on Arm platform gains traction.