AI chip firm Nvidia and software giant Microsoft are this week expected to debut the first Windows PCs that use Nvidia’s chips as the main processor, Axios reported at the weekend, citing sources.
Nvidia-powered computers are expected both from Microsoft’s Surface brand as well as other computer makers including Dell.
Microsoft’s efforts to shift to more battery-life-friendly chips have yet to drive a significant sales boom. Its primary rival Apple, which uses its own chips, unveiled updated MacBooks featuring its latest M5-series chips in March.
Microsoft and Nvidia will unveil the new PCs at the Computex trade show in Taiwan and Microsoft’s Build developer conference in San Francisco, the report said.
Nvidia did not respond to a request for comment. Microsoft declined to comment.
The official X accounts of Windows, Nvidia and chip design firm ARM all teased an upcoming announcement on Friday, announcing “a new era of PC”, along with what appeared to be coordinates in Taiwan’s capital Taipei.
News emerged in 2023 about Nvidia’s plans to design CPUs that would run Microsoft’s Windows software and use technology from ARM.
N1 chip
Qualcomm currently makes ARM-based CPUs for Windows laptops, while Intel and AMD remain the dominant suppliers of CPUs for Windows laptops.
Microsoft is also expected to debut software aimed at enabling AI agents to perform tasks locally on Windows computers, according to the Axios report.
The reported Nvidia processor – widely expected to be branded the N1, with a laptop-focused N1X variant – would be the company’s first consumer CPU since the Tegra X1 that powered its Shield TV streaming device more than a decade ago.
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According to multiple reports, the chip has been developed with Taiwan’s MediaTek and builds on the GB10 architecture at the heart of Nvidia’s DGX Spark mini PC, pairing a 20-core ARM-based CPU with a Blackwell-generation GPU and a dedicated neural processing unit for accelerating AI tasks on-device.
Leaked Geekbench results have pointed to a 20-core part clocked at upwards of 2.81GHz, with integrated graphics said to rival a GeForce RTX 5070 Ti. The chip is expected to be manufactured by TSMC on a 3nm process and to compete head-on with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite.
Nvidia and its hardware partners had reportedly intended to launch the chips in 2025, but a series of delays – attributed variously to hardware faults and to the timing of Microsoft’s next Windows release – pushed the debut into 2026. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is due to deliver his keynote on Monday at the Taipei Music Centre, a day before Computex formally opens.
Analysts expect the first N1X-powered laptops to launch above US$1 400, placing them well outside budget territory. Questions also remain over software: while Windows-on-ARM app compatibility has improved, it is still uneven for older x86 programs and many PC games – a potential drawback if Nvidia positions the machines for gaming. — Shubham Kalia and Abu Sultan, (c) 2026 Reuters