--- title: "Microsoft Declared the ‘Copilot+ PC’ the Future, Then Quietly Stopped Saying Its Name" description: "The new Surface machines clear every bar the brand ever set; the brand itself has been retired" author: "Walter Pine" published: 2026-09-25T17:57:37Z modified: 2026-09-26T17:20:53Z url: https://rews.cc/a/microsoft-declared-the-copilot-pc-the-future-then-quietly-st-91485b language: en tags: ["microsoft", "ai", "hardware", "surface", "nvidia", "tech"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # Microsoft Declared the ‘Copilot+ PC’ the Future, Then Quietly Stopped Saying Its Name *The new Surface machines clear every bar the brand ever set; the brand itself has been retired* By Walter Pine · September 25, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/microsoft-declared-the-copilot-pc-the-future-then-quietly-st-91485b ## In brief - Microsoft and Qualcomm confirmed they no longer call new Surface and other devices ‘Copilot+ PCs’ - The new Surface Pro 12 and Surface Laptop 13, out October 13, hit 80 TOPS — double the old Copilot+ bar - The 2024 Copilot+ spec required 16GB RAM, 256GB storage and a 40-TOPS NPU; some new Surfaces now ship with 8GB - Data showed buyers wanted new PCs that happened to have NPUs, not AI PCs; Dell revived XPS after axing it - Microsoft unveils Nvidia-based Surface laptops next month, with an October 7 event on local AI’s next chapter As recently as May, a page on Microsoft’s website described Copilot+ PCs as “a class of AI PCs and laptops” that represented “the fastest, most intelligent Windows PCs ever.” Anyone visiting that page now is sent elsewhere — to a page for “performance PCs,” where the old name survives but has been pushed well down the layout. Ars Technica found the change through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which preserves the May version like a specimen. The hardware underneath all of this has not changed. What has been unplugged is the word. The confirmation came at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 2026 Summit, where spokespeople for Microsoft and Qualcomm told Windows Central that new Surface devices and other machines will no longer be described as Copilot+ PCs. The machines in question are the Surface Pro 12-inch (2nd Edition) and the Surface Laptop 13-inch (2nd Edition), due October 13, both running Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Plus processors with a Hexagon neural processing unit rated at 80 trillion operations per second. That is double the threshold the Copilot+ label was invented to certify. Brett Ostrum, corporate vice president of Surface, told the publication the new computers “are not called Copilot+ PCs” anyway. > They do meet all the requirements of our previous bar for what Copilot+ devices are. We still lean into the narrative around AI on the edge and being able to have a hybrid solution out there. Kedar Kondap, Qualcomm’s senior vice president of compute, framed it as a distinction without a difference. “\[T\]he purpose for Copilot+ PCs was to be able to deliver \[NPU\] experience,” he told Windows Central. “So, it was to define a certain category of devices with a certain bar and metric... So from that perspective, it’s more offering the same experiences, probably without just using \[Copilot+ PC\] terminology now.” The same experiences, in other words, minus the name. ## The anatomy of a dead brand Copilot+ arrived in 2024 alongside the first wave of Arm-based Windows laptops, Microsoft and Qualcomm’s answer to what Intel had been calling the “AI PC.” The requirements were precise: 16 gigabytes of RAM, 256 gigabytes of storage, and an integrated neural processing unit — an NPU, a slice of silicon built specifically for AI workloads — capable of at least 40 TOPS, or 40 trillion operations per second. The industry lined up behind the idea. Other manufacturers adopted their own AI branding, and AMD went so far as to rename its mobile processors to include the word “AI” itself. Keyboards grew a dedicated Copilot key. The label’s flagship feature did not help. Recall, which was meant to make a Copilot+ PC remember everything its user had seen, was not well received, as The Verge notes, and Microsoft absorbed steady criticism for peppering Windows users with AI upsells and for the Copilot key, which can only now be remapped. Then came the sales data. According to TechSpot, AI PCs were indeed selling — but customers were buying them because they needed new computers and the new computers happened to contain NPUs, not because they wanted an AI PC. The demand was for machines; the AI was furniture. Manufacturers had already begun stepping back. In January, Dell resurrected its XPS brand only a year after killing it, conceding that AI alone was not a strong enough reason for anyone to buy a laptop. Microsoft’s own Surface refresh now includes models with only 8 gigabytes of RAM, half the original Copilot+ bar — a retreat TechSpot attributes in part, with some irony, to memory shortages driven by the AI boom itself. There is not enough memory to go around, because the data centers got there first. What replaces the name is, for the moment, an absence. Microsoft plans to unveil new high-end Surface laptops early next month built with Nvidia — a company that has historically preferred to run AI work on its own RTX graphics chips rather than on NPUs — and on October 7 it will host what it calls a conversation on how local AI will shape the next chapter of the PC. The Verge’s Sean Hollister guesses a shiny new brand will emerge from it to fill the vacancy the old one leaves. On Hacker News, the eulogies were brief. One commenter, moogly, had a single request: “Cool, can I get my right Ctrl key back?” He explained that the Copilot key on his HP laptop cannot be tamed under Linux, because its keyboard firmware registers a key release after three milliseconds even while the key is held down. The brand may be gone from the marketing. Its button is still on the keyboard. And the page that once promised the fastest, most intelligent Windows PCs ever still resolves — it just takes you somewhere else, to a place where the name appears smaller, the way a lighthouse that has been decommissioned still shows up on the chart. ## Sources - [Nobody wanted an "AI PC," so Microsoft stopped calling it that](https://www.techspot.com/news/113985-nobody-wanted-ai-pc-microsoft-stopped-calling.html) — techspot.com - [Microsoft stops insisting you need a "Copilot+ PC"](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/09/microsoft-stops-insisting-you-need-a-copilot-pc/) — Ars Technica - [Microsoft is killing off the 'Copilot Plus PC' brand](https://theverge.com/tech/1000495/microsoft-is-killing-off-the-copilot-plus-pc-brand) — theverge.com