Microsoft Wants to Turn Windows Into an Agentic Operating System
At a Windows and Surface event, Microsoft outlined plans to bring AI agents and hybrid intelligence to Windows 11. It also showed the Surface Laptop Ultra, powered by Nvidia's RTX Spark chip.
Microsoft, the software company behind Windows, used a Windows and Surface event this week to lay out plans for turning Windows 11 into an "agentic OS", an operating system where artificial intelligence (AI) agents do work for the user. The Verge's Tom Warren notes that Windows 11 is not being replaced by Windows 12 but is becoming the foundation for Microsoft's next big ambition.
CEO Satya Nadella and Windows chief Pavan Davuluri described hybrid intelligence, an approach in which Windows can use free local models rather than expensive cloud ones. Demos showed GitHub Copilot coding locally without costly cloud tokens, a long list of models that can now run on the device, agents such as OpenClaw, Hermes and Perplexity, and deeper Copilot integration in Windows.
Surface Laptop Ultra
The centrepiece of the push is the Surface Laptop Ultra, powered by Nvidia's RTX Spark chips. Its GPU has enough power to run AI models of more than 120 billion parameters locally. Davuluri described it as built for developers and creators. The laptop starts at $2,599, while RTX Spark PCs, including models from Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo and MSI, can cost up to $6,999 with 128GB of unified memory.
A sceptical assessment
Warren stresses that Microsoft showed little for ordinary users. One exception is a fully redesigned Windows Search, which is faster and shows results in-line, working more like a launcher. He recalls that the Copilot Plus PCs introduced two years ago, built around NPU (neural processing unit) chips, have not delivered the promised revolution, and that the Recall feature became irrelevant because of privacy concerns and a delayed launch.
RTX Spark machines currently target a niche audience. To matter more widely, similar capabilities would need to reach cheaper devices. For now, developers and creators are most important to Microsoft, since cloud AI agents running on Linux virtual machines could boost Linux app compatibility. Microsoft therefore wants to make Windows friendlier to agents.
