Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra starts at $2,599 in the US and ₹2,39,999 in India — shipping October 16. It’s the first laptop to ship with NVIDIA’s RTX Spark platform, built on Arm architecture and designed for local AI workloads. No other RTX Spark device has launched yet. This is the debut unit, and it’s not aimed at general consumers. It’s for AI researchers, developers, and engineers who need up to 128GB of unified memory and sustained GPU-accelerated performance, even on battery. That last part matters: Microsoft says RTX Spark’s Arm foundation lets the Laptop Ultra deliver consistent frame rates in demanding titles like Gears of War: E-Day without throttling when unplugged. A departure from typical x86 laptops. The machine weighs under 4.5 pounds, lighter than Apple’s 16-inch MacBook Pro, and features a custom magnetic USB-C port, a breakaway connector that detaches if yanked, but still uses standard USB-C power delivery so any USB-C charger works. The keyboard and haptic touchpad follow Microsoft’s established tactile language. There’s no flashy hinge or foldable screen. Just aluminum, brightness, silence, and a focus on what the hardware does, not how it looks. The $2,599 base config includes the RTX Spark silicon, but Engadget notes Microsoft hasn’t disclosed exact CPU/GPU specs. Only that it’s Arm-based, unified-memory-equipped, and built for hybrid intelligence (local + cloud AI). That’s the core pitch: not raw speed alone, but predictable, portable AI execution. Developers like UCSC’s Aidan Pinero are already citing it as the first Windows machine that matches MacBooks with 128GB RAM for running large models locally. Availability begins October 16. Preorders are live.