Microsoft on Monday introduced a speedy, AI-enabled notebook computer that it claims far outperforms Apple's MacBook Air. Microsoft stock rose on the news.
At a media event at its headquarters in Redmond, Wash., Microsoft unveiled a new category of Windows personal computers designed for artificial intelligence called Copilot+ PCs.
The company showed off a new Microsoft Surface notebook PC that it claims outperforms the 15-inch MacBook Air by up to 58% in a sustained multithreaded computing application. Microsoft also said its new Copilot+ notebook provides up to 20% more battery life than the MacBook Air when running local video playback.
Microsoft's Surface Copilot+ PC runs on a Snapdragon X Series processor from Qualcomm and will be available on June 18.
PC makers Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung also are coming out with Copilot+ PCs running Qualcomm processors. Copilot+ PCs will start at $999.
Microsoft plans to add Copilot+ PCs running AMD and Intel processors at a later date.
Microsoft Stock Rises On AI PC News
On the stock market today, Microsoft stock rose 1.2% to close at 425.34. Meanwhile, Qualcomm stock jumped 2% to 197.76. And Apple stock climbed 0.6% to 191.04.
At the event, Microsoft officials demonstrated several new AI-powered applications for Copilot+ PCs. An application called Recall allows users to easily find and remember what they have seen on their PC. Live Captions can translate audio from 40-plus languages into English. And Cocreator can generate and refine AI images in near real-time directly on the device.
"Over the past year, we have seen an incredible pace of innovation of AI in the cloud with Copilot allowing us to do things that we never dreamed possible," Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft executive vice president, said in a blog post. "Now, we begin a new chapter with AI innovation on the device. We have completely reimagined the entirety of the PC — from silicon to the operating system, the application layer to the cloud — with AI at the center, marking the most significant change to the Window platform in decades."
Microsoft held the product launch event ahead of its Build conference for software developers, which starts Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Microsoft stock is near a buy point of 430.82 from a flat base, according to IBD MarketSurge charts.
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