{"id":1468,"date":"2026-06-04T16:22:27","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T16:22:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=1468"},"modified":"2026-06-04T16:22:27","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T16:22:27","slug":"microsoft-build-2026-windows-love-notepad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=1468","title":{"rendered":"Windows is back on the Microsoft menu"},"content":{"rendered":"


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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<\/strong> 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<\/div>\n

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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<\/div>\n

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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<\/strong> 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<\/div>\n

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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<\/div>\n

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\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 <\/strong>in an interview with Notepad<\/em>. 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<\/div>\n

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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<\/div>\n

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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<\/div>\n

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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<\/div>\n

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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<\/div>\n

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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<\/div>\n

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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<\/div>\n

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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<\/div>\n

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\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<\/div>\n

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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<\/div>\n

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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<\/div>\n

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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<\/div>\n

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