Microsoft Build 2026: All the news about Windows, AI, RTX Spark, and more – The Verge

Nvidia is already planning N2X and N3X chips — the goal is the Star Trek computer

2026-06-03T16:03:50-04:00

Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp. | Bloomberg via Getty Images

Just in case you were wondering, Nvidia's RTX Spark isn't supposed to be a one-off. The company is not just flirting with becoming the fifth high-profile vendor of consumer laptop chips to see if people bite. At Computex 2026 in Taipei, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang confirmed at least two additional generations of RTX Spark are already planned. The eventual goal, he said, is to build Star Trek-like computers and and Star Wars-like droids you can order around with your voice.

"I want to talk to my laptop! I want R2-D2!" he told analysts and investors at Computex, revealing that he started working with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella "about three years …

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Microsoft and OpenAI broke up — now they’re ready to fight

2026-06-03T10:14:26-04:00

At Microsoft's annual Build conference on Tuesday, the company announced a slew of new or expanded AI initiatives, including a super app, in-house reasoning models, a cybersecurity tool, and OpenClaw-esque AI agents. All this news added up to a clear message: Microsoft is positioned to be one of the biggest players in AI, and it's finally acting like it.

For years, Microsoft's AI business leaned hard on its early and exclusive partnership with OpenAI. But the drama-filled marriage slowly devolved into a situationship, and the pair effectively separated in late April (though Microsoft is still OpenAI's primary cloud partner - for now). This …

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A first look at Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra and Surface Dev Box

2026-06-03T09:22:17-04:00

The Surface Laptop Ultra.

Microsoft has two new Surface devices arriving later this year, both powered by Nvidia's RTX Spark chips. I got a chance to take a closer look at both the Surface Laptop Ultra and Surface RTX Spark Dev Box at Microsoft's Build conference this week, and while both have the same chip inside, they're utilizing Nvidia's RTX Spark in different ways.

The Surface Laptop Ultra looks and feels very much like a 16-inch MacBook Pro. There are no transforming hinges, detachable displays, or any other tricks - this is a clamshell laptop built with performance in mind. Microsoft has opted for a 15-inch mini LED panel, which operates at up to 2,000 nits o …

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Microsoft Build 2026: The 7 biggest announcements

2026-06-02T16:17:22-04:00

Microsoft just kicked off Build 2026 with a keynote from CEO Satya Nadella and other company leaders. As expected, it was filled with announcements, ranging from new Surface hardware to an always-on personal assistant and updates across Microsoft's in-house AI models.

If you didn't watch the event live, you can catch up on all the latest news in the roundup below.

A mini Surface PC designed for AI development

The Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is geared toward developers who want to run local AI models on their device, serving as a substitute for Qualcomm's canceled dev kit. It comes equipped with Nvidia's new Arm-based Spark RTX chip and 128G …

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Microsoft’s next-gen quantum chip cuts timeline to useful quantum computing

2026-06-02T15:23:20-04:00

Microsoft’s new Majorana 2 quantum chip. | Image: Microsoft

Microsoft claimed last year that it had made a key breakthrough in quantum computing with Majorana 1, the company's first quantum processor. While physicists were immediately skeptical of Microsoft's claims, the software giant is announcing Majorana 2 today, the next generation of its topological quantum chip.

Majorana 2 contains qubits, a unit of information in quantum computing much like the binary bits that computers use today, that are 1,000 times more reliable, according to Microsoft. It's a milestone that helps make quantum computing more reliable, thanks to the use of a new material stack and some help from Microsoft Discovery's agen …

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Microsoft’s first advanced reasoning AI is here

2026-06-02T14:28:09-04:00

Microsoft announced a bunch of new in-house AI models at Build 2026, including a new "flagship" model: MAI-Thinking-1. It's an ambitious step into model development for Microsoft, which introduced its initial in-house models last year - before then, it had relied on OpenAI's models. The two companies recently renegotiated their deal to loosen ties.

According to Microsoft, MAI-Thinking-1 is a "medium-sized model" that "matches leading models" on "key" software engineering benchmarks. Microsoft says the company "trained it from the ground up on clean data, without distillation from third-party models."

As for other models announced today, t …

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Microsoft Scout is a new AI personal assistant built on OpenClaw

2026-06-02T14:28:48-04:00

Much like Google, Microsoft is launching its own version of OpenClaw. Microsoft Scout is an always-on assistant that integrates into Microsoft 365 apps like Outlook, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams, allowing businesses to assign a virtual assistant to employees to help with organizing calendars, expense reporting, email drafts, and much more.

Unlike Copilot that lives inside Microsoft 365 apps, Microsoft Scout can see and do a lot more. "This is a personal assistant, it's the first real personal assistant we've offered customers," explains Omar Shahine, corporate vice president of Microsoft Scout, in an interview with The Verge. "I think it's …

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Microsoft’s Project Solara is an OS for AI agent gadgets

2026-06-02T13:46:30-04:00

Microsoft just announced "Project Solara," a new OS designed for gadgets that run AI agents, at Build 2026. The company is calling it "a new platform built from the ground up to power agent-driven experiences." It's built on Android, not Windows.

Microsoft demonstrated two concept Project Solara devices at Build today: Desk concept and badge concept. The desk concept is an Amazon Echo Show-like device that unlocks with facial recognition and provides access to AI agents.

The desk concept looks like an Amazon Echo Show. | Image: Microsoft" data-portal-copyright="Image: Microsoft">The badge concept for Project Solara. | Image: Microsoft" data-portal-copyright="Image: Microsoft">

The badge concept is a wearable, the type of badge you'd typically use to access a work building. It has a camera and a fingerprint scanner, which can wake an AI agent wi …

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Microsoft created the mini Surface dev box that Qualcomm couldn’t

2026-06-02T12:52:54-04:00

Microsoft only just announced a new Surface Laptop Ultra at the weekend, and it's now revealing a miniature Surface PC aimed at developers. The new Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is powered by Nvidia's new Arm-based RTX Spark chips, just like the Surface Laptop Ultra, and is optimized for sustained workloads and local AI tasks.

The Surface RTX Spark Dev Box looks a little like the top of an Xbox Series X console, with an aluminum chassis that also doubles as a heatsink. It has a 100-watt thermal envelope, slightly more than the 45-watt-to-80-watt thermal envelopes for Nvidia's RTX Spark laptops. This miniature Surface PC also has 128GB of unifie …

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Microsoft’s new developer-optimized Windows embraces Linux even more

2026-06-02T12:52:19-04:00

Microsoft is kicking off its Build developer conference today with a promise of making Windows a trusted platform for development. As the company continues to focus on performance and reliability fixes for Windows 11, it's also creating a developer-optimized experience that bundles a lot of useful tools and apps and embraces Linux even further.

"We have optimized the Windows 11 experience for developers, bringing frequently used command line utilities, a familiar comfort shell, faster setup experience, a built-in way to create and interact with Linux containers on Windows and a new experimental Intelligent Terminal," explains Windows chief …

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