The tech industry wants you to run AI models at home, but it's not for everyone

Microsoft (MSFT) on Wednesday unveiled its Nvidia-powered Surface Laptop Ultra on Wednesday designed to let users run AI models at home without relying on the cloud. Starting at $2,599, the Surface Laptop Ultra runs on Nvidia's (NVDA) Arm-based RTX Spark, which offers upwards of 128GB of onboard memory. Most consumers and enterprise users access AI platforms through cloud services like OpenAI's (OPAI.PVT) ChatGPT, Anthropic's (ANTH.PVT) Claude, Google's (GOOG, GOOGL) Gemini, or Meta's (META) Muse. Microsoft and Nvidia, as well as rivals Apple (AAPL), Intel (INTC), and AMD (AMD), are increasingly pushing the concept of running AI software in the home. The thinking is pretty straightforward.