Update, Oct. 7: Microsoft’s Windows event didn’t bring a replacement name. It introduced “Windows hybrid intelligence,” local and cloud AI for Copilot and agents, and its announcement post still uses the Copilot+ PC label, saying more than 40% of laptops being built for business are Copilot+ PCs and that the new Copilot features will roll out on them first.
Microsoft’s newest Surface PCs meet every requirement for a Copilot+ PC, but the company has stopped calling them that. Surface CVP Brett Ostrum confirmed the change to Windows Central‘s Zac Bowden at this year’s Snapdragon Summit.
“These are not called Copilot+ PCs,” Ostrum said. “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.”
Bowden noted that none of the Surface PCs launched in 2026, including the new 12-inch Surface Pro and 13-inch Surface Laptop, carry the Copilot+ PC name, unlike Surface models from 2025 and earlier. Copilot+ compatibility now shows up only in specification sheets.
Qualcomm sounds ready to move on too. Kedar Kondap, its SVP of compute and gaming, told Bowden that “the purpose for Copilot+ PCs was to be able to deliver [NPU] experiences.” Devices that offer the same experiences will do so “probably without just using [Copilot+ PC] terminology now,” he said.
Microsoft and Qualcomm launched the category in 2024 with a hardware floor: a neural processing unit rated at 40 trillion operations per second or more, 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, with Snapdragon X chips in the first machines. Its headline feature, Recall, drew immediate criticism from security researchers, and Microsoft delayed it, so the first Copilot+ PCs shipped without it. Over the following two years, Windows Central reported, more and more PC makers dropped the name from marketing and product names.
The shift was visible at Build 2026 in June. Writing for PCMag, Chris Hoffman said Microsoft “neglected to mention its AI-first PC hardware brand.” Satya Nadella told developers that “you now have the full scope of GPUs that you can get to” when building AI software for Windows ML, and he announced that many AI features were expanding beyond Copilot+ PCs. Hoffman also pointed out that the 16GB RAM floor was under pressure as cheaper 8GB laptops arrived.
Nvidia’s coming RTX Spark PCs meet the Copilot+ bar, but Nvidia hasn’t used the brand. Bowden said he suspects that’s deliberate.
The specification itself still exists. Features that need the NPU, such as Recall, still require hardware that meets it. What’s going away is the marketing name. The Verge‘s Sean Hollister noted that critics argued back in 2024 that almost every PC would soon have the basic AI hardware the brand was meant to signal.
WebProNews is an iEntry Publication