{"id":62555,"date":"2026-06-04T18:39:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T18:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/62555\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T18:39:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T18:39:10","slug":"windows-is-back-on-the-microsoft-menu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/62555\/","title":{"rendered":"Windows is back on the Microsoft menu"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can\u2019t remember the last time Microsoft kicked off a Build keynote with Windows front and center, but that\u2019s exactly what CEO Satya Nadella did this week. Nadella didn\u2019t address the issues Microsoft is trying to fix in Windows 11 but chose to woo the audience with Microsoft\u2019s slick Surface RTX Spark Dev Kit<\/a> instead, calling it a \u201cdream machine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nadella unveiled the new Surface hardware just days after Nvidia officially returned to Windows on Arm with its new RTX Spark chips<\/a>. Both companies are talking up these chips as some kind of new beginning for PCs, and it\u2019s clear that RTX Spark will drive local AI workloads in a way that Microsoft\u2019s previous Copilot Plus PCs haven\u2019t yet managed.<\/p>\n

Build really drove home that message this week, with Windows positioned as an all-important part of Microsoft\u2019s AI agent efforts. Microsoft\u2019s original mission under Bill Gates was a computer on every desk and in every home, and Nadella reframed that as \u201cunmetered intelligence on every desk and in every home\u201d within a few minutes of his keynote beginning.<\/p>\n

It set the stage for Microsoft and Nvidia to position their new Windows PCs as a potential solution for costly, usage-based pricing of cloud-based AI models. As local compute grows in capability, there\u2019s a clear gap that Microsoft and Nvidia can fill with powerful hardware you actually own.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we, as Microsoft, have the responsibility for building the best possible AI stack that we can on [Windows], and obviously drive the best AI stack that we can in the cloud,\u201d says Windows chief Pavan Davuluri in an interview with Notepad. Davuluri thinks that Microsoft is in a good position to capitalize on hybrid compute, where chips like the RTX Spark will handle a lot of local workloads and intelligently hand off to the cloud when they need something more powerful.<\/p>\n

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is even more bullish about local AI compute<\/a>. He wants to turn PCs into devices that work for you, eliminating that idle time when PCs are switched off or you\u2019re not using them. \u201cIn the future, if I need my laptop to do something, I just text it with WhatsApp,\u201d said Huang earlier this week. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to necessarily run everything in the cloud, because if you can run it locally, it\u2019s free.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nadella seems to agree. \u201cThe amount of compute that there is at the edge is astounding,\u201d he said during his Build keynote. \u201cEvery PC, if you sort of aggregate that, that\u2019s a lot of compute power.\u201d<\/p>\n

That power is really on display with Nvidia\u2019s new RTX Spark chips, which will come to a variety of creator-focused laptops and miniature PCs later this year. RTX Spark is capable of running a 120 billion parameter large language model locally, allowing many AI workloads to run without ever touching the cloud. That\u2019s an appealing concept during a continued AI money squeeze<\/a> for developers and consumers.<\/p>\n

Microsoft is targeting its own Surface Laptop Ultra<\/a> at developers and creators and pairing it with ongoing improvements to Windows 11 performance and developer-friendly additions. While Microsoft\u2019s deeper embrace of Linux utilities<\/a> inside Windows this week didn\u2019t generate the same gleeful audience reaction as the Windows Terminal<\/a> announcement in 2019, developers I\u2019ve spoken to are excited by the Coreutils and WSL containers additions.<\/p>\n

The Surface Laptop Ultra has also been generating some buzz, particularly among developers and power users. Microsoft isn\u2019t quite positioning this as a mainstream premium laptop, but there\u2019s certainly room for it to appeal far beyond developers. \u201cI think you\u2019ll see us do well when it comes to STEM applications, and CAD apps running on the platform, because they take advantage of the same characteristic patterns of high-performance compute,\u201d explains Davuluri.<\/p>\n

All of this renewed focus on Windows at Microsoft seemed impossible only six months ago. Davuluri responded to the pressure on Microsoft to improve Windows 11 by laying out a plan<\/a> to focus on performance, reliability, and overall experiences in the OS just a couple of months ago. I got to see some of the performance improvements at Build this week, with side-by-side comparisons of the Start menu and taskbar loading faster. Microsoft is putting in a lot of effort to turn Windows 11 around and listen to feedback from a variety of users.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ve been wondering why Microsoft doesn\u2019t just jump to Windows 12. It seems easier to just admit defeat on Windows 11 and then position Windows 12 as the remedy. Microsoft has done this many times in the past, particularly with the releases of Windows 7 and Windows 10.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of considerations when you think about the versioning of an operating system itself, and I think for us, a lot of the core proposition with Windows 11, or quite frankly, with Windows 12, or any label we use, has to do with end users and how they use the product and the workflow that they\u2019re in,\u201d says Davuluri. \u201cI think we are more focused on having the product experience be better in the context they\u2019re using it, and that I think is the most important thing for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

While we might not be getting a Windows 12 anytime soon, I\u2019m curious how this Windows exists in a world of AI agents. Microsoft has been clear that it sees Windows as a home for AI agents and workloads, but it also unveiled Project Solara<\/a> this week, a new platform for agent-first devices. Microsoft demonstrated a smart employee key card that could run an agent capable of transcribing and recognizing real world objects, and it also showed a reference design for an Amazon Echo Show\u2013like device with an AI agent. It\u2019s clear that Microsoft wants to offer up a platform for dedicated AI devices of the future.<\/p>\n

The big surprise is that Project Solara devices are powered by a version of Android, not Windows. Despite this, Davuluri expects to see Project Solara running on Windows devices too. \u201cWe are not hard bound to a device specific operating system,\u201d says Davuluri. \u201cYou should imagine a world where Solara will be great on a bunch of platforms, including Windows, both Windows 11 locally and Windows 365 instances in the cloud.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether the future of AI agents runs on Windows, Android, or something else may not ultimately matter right now. For the first time in years, Microsoft seems determined to make Windows central to that conversation either way. Build 2026 wasn\u2019t about fixing Windows\u2019 past problems, it was about convincing developers that Windows still has a significant role to play in AI\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

Microsoft and OpenAI broke up \u2014 now they\u2019re ready to fight. Microsoft announced a slew of new or expanded AI initiatives at Build this week. MAI-Thinking-1, Microsoft\u2019s first reasoning model, was the main addition, along with six other new models focused on image, voice, transcription, and coding. Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman told me<\/a> these models are part of a bigger effort to prove that Microsoft can become a top AI model creator.A first look at Microsoft\u2019s Surface Laptop Ultra and Surface Dev Box. I got a chance to take a closer look at both the Surface Laptop Ultra and Surface RTX Spark Dev Box at Build this week. Microsoft laid on a miniature showcase<\/a>, demonstrating just how bright the Laptop Ultra screen is, as well as the power of Nvidia\u2019s RTX Spark chip. As is tradition at any Surface event, there was also a full breakdown of the components inside the Laptop Ultra. It\u2019s impressive how much attention to detail there is inside, alongside the focus on repairability.Microsoft\u2019s next-gen quantum chip cuts timeline to useful quantum computing. Microsoft unveiled its latest Majorana 2 chip this week, which uses a new material stack that promises quantum computing much sooner<\/a>. Microsoft is claiming that by switching from aluminum to lead it has improved the performance of qubits, a unit of information in quantum computing much like the binary bits that computers use today. Physicists were skeptical of Microsoft\u2019s first claims with Majorana 1, so some are once again questioning the company\u2019s target of useful quantum computing by 2029.Microsoft Scout is a new AI personal assistant built on OpenClaw. Much like Google, Microsoft is launching its own version of OpenClaw. Microsoft Scout is an always-on assistant<\/a> that integrates into Microsoft 365 apps like Outlook, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams, allowing businesses to assign a virtual assistant to employees to help with organizing calendars, expense reporting, email drafts, and much more. Microsoft is releasing a preview version of Scout in the form of a desktop app, but eventually the plan is to have a full Scout cloud service.Microsoft could be the next Big Tech antitrust target. Microsoft has escaped antitrust action in the US for 25 years, but that might change soon. New civil investigative demands reveal that the Federal Trade Commission is looking at potentially exclusionary behavior around Microsoft\u2019s Azure cloud services<\/a>, as well as its role in the AI industry. Customers have complained that Microsoft\u2019s 2019 changes to its licensing terms made it significantly more costly to run Windows software on infrastructure outside of Microsoft\u2019s own Azure cloud service. The US isn\u2019t the only country probing this issue. The European Commission, UK Competition and Markets Authority, and Japan Fair Trade Commission have been investigating Microsoft\u2019s cloud services within the last year.This extravagant gaming laptop could ruin other screens for you. Asus\u2019 Strix Scar 18 has a 4K 240Hz display that has impressed my colleague Antonio G. Di Benedetto<\/a>. The Mini LED panel has over 2,000 dimming zones and up to 1,600 nits of peak brightness in HDR mode, but when you disable the HDR mode you get access to a special feature called Extreme Low Motion Blur (ELMB). This allows the dimming zones to automatically divide the display into smaller horizontal bands of pixels, refreshing them row by row very quickly \u2014 much like a traditional CRT. This dramatically reduces motion blur, a great benefit for fast-paced video games.Microsoft makes it more secure to run OpenClaw on Windows. Microsoft launched Microsoft Execution Containers this week, a policy-driven layer to make its OS more secure for things like OpenClaw on Windows<\/a>. It\u2019s going a step further too, allowing a companion app for OpenClaw to run contained on Windows PCs. It should stop AI agents like OpenClaw from deleting all your files. \u201cYou can totally run OpenClaw inside your company now,\u201d says OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger.Call of Duty: Warzone is dropping PS4 and Xbox One support later this year. Activision is planning to drop support for PS4 and Xbox One consoles in Call of Duty: Warzone later this year. Players will need to upgrade to a PS5 or Xbox Series S \/ X console<\/a> to continue playing Call of Duty: Warzone once season 6 of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 concludes later this year. Although the news isn\u2019t too surprising, the timing couldn\u2019t be worse for Warzone players still holding on to older consoles. Both Microsoft and Sony have increased the prices of their consoles over the past year, with the PS5 and Xbox Series X now $150 more than their original $499 launch prices.Microsoft is threatening legal action for disclosing exploits. Microsoft is feuding with a security researcher publicly posting vulnerabilities. Someone going by the name Nightmare Eclipse has been posting proof-of-concept exploit code, with some posts suggesting that they\u2019re a disgruntled former employee. Microsoft\u2019s response has angered the cybersecurity community<\/a>, after the company suggested it plans to bring a criminal case against Nightmare Eclipse for failing to follow \u201cproper coordination\u201d in disclosing vulnerabilities.Microsoft 365 Copilot gets a speed boost and cleaner design. Microsoft launched a revamped version of Microsoft 365 Copilot last week, complete with a cleaner design that the company claims loads twice as fast<\/a>. The redesign is rolling out across desktop and mobile and enables Copilot to present you with tools and controls based on your prompt, instead of showing a bunch of options at once. It\u2019s part of a bigger effort to improve Copilot\u2019s usefulness for businesses, while Microsoft continues to remove the AI assistant from parts of Windows.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m always keen to hear from readers, so please drop a comment here, or you can reach me at notepad@theverge.com<\/a> if you want to discuss anything else. If you\u2019ve heard about any of Microsoft\u2019s secret projects, you can reach me via email at notepad@theverge.com<\/a> or speak to me confidentially on the Signal messaging app, where I\u2019m tomwarren.01<\/a>. I\u2019m also tomwarren on Telegram, if you\u2019d prefer to chat there.<\/p>\n

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