What to expect from today's Microsoft Surface event

One of Microsoft’s most important hardware events in years is about to happen. It’s not Microsoft Build – the company’s developers conference – which starts on Tuesday. Instead, Microsoft is holding a small event today, May 20, to talk about its upcoming Surface devices.

At the event, we expect Microsoft to announce new versions of the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6, both of which run on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon It’s Microsoft’s latest attempt to pivot to Arm, and one that the company believes will eventually stick. This change is supposed to provide better battery life; And if initial rumors are true, the Qualcomm chip should be powerful enough to keep up with the Intel processors it replaces.

Surface Pro 10 for business. This model, released in April, has an Intel chip, but the Arm version is expected to look the same.

Image: Microsoft

These devices are also expected to include dedicated AI hardware accelerators called NPUs to better support upcoming Windows 11 AI features. One of these rumored features, AI Explorer, is supposed to track everything you do on a Windows 11 device, and then let you ask the AI about what you’ve done. Microsoft is said to be building dozens of language models into the system so these chips can run AI features natively.

The Surface Laptop 6 for Business, which did not get the physical changes that were rumored for the new device.

Image: Microsoft

Today’s Surface event may also mark the start of a bigger push from Microsoft. There are rumored to be a lot of “AI PC” laptops using Qualcomm’s new chip on the way. And around the event, we’re also likely to hear about other things Snapdragon Microsoft is clearly very confident that the new Arm chips will bring Windows devices back into competition with Apple’s powerful, battery-efficient PCs.

The event will not be broadcast — only journalists are allowed to attend — so stay tuned the edge For live coverage of the day’s news when the event begins at 10am PT / 1pm ET.