Microsoft launched the Copilot+ brand in 2024 to differentiate its offerings with local AI capabilities from other devices that do not have NPUs or fail to meet the minimum 40+ TOPS requirement. But a little over two years after the disastrous launch and poor sales, the company has quietly moved away from the brand. Microsoft Surface CVP Brett Ostrum confirmed this to Windows Central in an interview on the sidelines of Snapdragon Summit 2026.

“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 out there.” Even other devices that would’ve been eligible under the branding, including the upcoming Nvidia RTX Spark N1X and Microsoft’s own Project Zenith, are missing the Copilot+ badges. The company also said that it’s scaling back Copilot’s presence in Windows 11, promising to improve the operating system’s performance, reliability, and updates. Microsoft also vowed to optimize it to run smoothly on just 8GB of RAM amid the AI-driven memory shortage.

However, that doesn’t mean Microsoft is backing away completely from Copilot. Despite dropping the hardware branding, it’s still working on numerous AI features for its product lineup. The company recently revamped Copilot and added new features like Home, Code, and Autopilot. It has also tested Copilot+ AI features that run on discrete GPUs, possibly expanding the feature set to PCs that use processors without a built-in NPU. In fact, one AI consultant mapped out Microsoft Copilot products and discovered more than 80 unique offerings, with many more possibly unaccounted for.

Microsoft did not give a specific reason for dropping the branding, but as many modern mainstream and high-end processors now come with NPUs that can hit 40 TOPS or more, it seems that it no longer makes sense to offer that differentiation. Aside from that, the current memory chip shortage has made the minimum 16GB requirement rather expensive, with Microsoft even purging its 32GB RAM recommendation from its website and releasing brand-new Surface for Business laptops with as little as 8GB of RAM.

It’s still unclear if the quiet sunset of the Copilot+ brand means that every Windows 11 PC will now get all the AI features that were once locked behind the name. But even if it will no longer exist on the hardware side, we still expect the Copilot branding to stay inside Windows and other Microsoft products for better or for worse.

Microsoft is taking another swing at Copilot, adding new features as it specifically turns the AI feature set into a series of tools designed for work. Branded "new Copilot", it will serve as a mix between a chat, a harness, and a business assistant.

Copilot will now be divided into three sections: Home, Code, and Autopilot. Microsoft pitches Home as a "new starting point," where you organize and connect your meetings, documents, emails, apps, and yes, agents. Effectively, it keeps everyone aligned on projects. The company describes the Home area as mixing Chat and Cowork, its existing agent. The new Copilot is rolling out with Microsoft's Frontier Program for businesses and individual subscribers, allowing early access to features now.

Office will live in the Home section, including Teams threads, calendars, Outlook, and more. You can ask Copilot to build slides, create spreadsheets, or put together documents.

Code is an answer to ChatGPT's Codex and Anthropic's Claude Code. Microsoft is describing the act of vibe coding and building small apps "as basic a skill as writing a memo or modeling a budget." Code is built on the same technology as GitHub Copilot, and is run in a sandboxed environment that can be hosted on your system. With Microsoft's new Copilot Managed Runtime, enterprises will be able to host code in their own Microsoft 365 environment, with Microsoft managing the code.

Autopilot is a rebranding of Scout, a "digital teammate." This is a semi-autonomous agent that you can name and tell what to do, and it will go off on its own to do it. This is designed for recurring work, though Microsoft describes it as being able to do more advanced work, including building schedules, handling meetings, and reaching out to others in an organization.

All of Copilot uses Microsoft IQ, designed to set a business context for agents to follow by giving them a framework about how AI should work in your organization. By the end of the month, Microsoft expects to launch a plugin registry to add functionality, in a catalog managed by IT administrators.

For managing spending, Microsoft's subscription license will give you Copilot in chat across Office, while an "Auto" mode will consider accuracy, speed, and cost to pick a model for other jobs. Organizations can use usage-based billing to pick which models they want to use based on cost. "Cowork, Code, and Autopilot; new long-running agentic capabilities; and frontier models like Astra and Fable all run on UBB," Microsoft chief marketing officer for AI at Work, Jared Spataro, wrote in a blog post.

Copilot may not be as exciting to individual developers and at-home enthusiasts as some other AI platforms, but it's clear Microsoft is revamping to take another shot at making its AI tools the most popular for businesses.

Microsoft is finally updating its lowest-end computers: the 13-inch Surface Laptop and 12-inch Surface Pro. Both systems are getting the Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Plus processor (including an 80 TOPS NPU), up from a first-gen Snapdragon X Plus. The company announced the new Surfaces on its blog, in timing with Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit.

Both new devices will launch on October 13. The Laptop will start at $1,199, while the Surface Pro will be $1,149. These are substantial increases over the previous versions, which started at $899 and $799, respectively, when they launched.

Microsoft claims that the new systems are 17% faster in Microsoft Office workloads, up to 18% more efficient on battery, offer "more than" 60% faster graphics, and have up to 95% faster AI inferencing on the NPU. Those are all compared to previous-generation Snapdragon X Plus processors.

Both systems are getting a new black color and 25% brighter displays than previous generations. The 12-inch Pro will also receive optional 5G connectivity, but only in enterprise versions of the device.

The Surface Pro will also introduce Ink Canvas, a new sketching and annotating app for Windows 11. It comes preinstalled on the new tablet and will be available for other Surface and supported Windows 11 devices through the Microsoft Store.

Surface Mouse

Beyond the two new Surface systems, the company is also announcing a new Surface Mouse. The $79.99 mouse includes haptic feedback, which has only been on some Surface notebooks so far. This can take advantage of features built into Windows 11 that allow for haptic responses for actions such as hovering over the exit button or resizing windows. Logitech's recently released MX Master 4 mouse also supports haptics.

Microsoft's pointer is designed for ambidextrous use (unlike the MX Master 4), connects over Bluetooth 6.0, uses two AAA batteries, and comes in both black and platinum colors. Like the laptops, it will launch on October 13.