NEW from Microsoft

Hi, hi, hi! In today’s digest, I’m covering Microsoft’s new range of AI-powered laptops. Yes, you read that right. But first…

The headlines: 

🤖 Scarlett Johansson has released a statement about OpenAI using her likeness.

💰 Meta, Match, and Coinbase are teaming up to fight online scams. 

🍎 Apple is challenging its $2 billion EU antitrust fine.

Okay, that does it! I’m officially declaring the month of May AI Christmas or ChristmAIs. Who’s with me? Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen huge launches, from Google’s Gemini 1.5 Flash to OpenAI’s GPT-4o. Now, another household name is getting in on the action.

Microsoft is making a major push to integrate AI into laptops with the new Copilot+ PC line. Announced at yesterday’s Build event, the new Windows laptops will have built-in AI hardware and native AI software features. CEO Satya Nadella announced that partners, including Dell, Lenovo, Samsung, HP, Acer, and Asus, will offer these models alongside two new Surface devices from Microsoft.

These advancements are powered by neural processors in the laptops, enabling features like "Recall," which uses AI to create a searchable photographic memory of all activities on the PC and allowing them to run over 40 different AI models, including OpenAI’s GPT-4o model, which dropped last week. Microsoft’s own Copilot software is also getting an update by being able to run GPT-4o.

Yusuf Mehdi, a Microsoft executive overseeing Windows, claims these laptops will be 58% faster than a MacBook Air with an M3 processor and offer all-day battery life. However, it remains unclear whether this performance applies to all Copilot+ PCs or just those using Qualcomm’s Arm-based processors. Microsoft hopes to sell 50 million laptops under the Copilot Plus branding within the next 12 months. 

To ensure these laptops meet performance standards, they will require at least a 256GB SSD, a neural processor, and 16GB of RAM. Arm-based models with Qualcomm chips promise up to 15 hours of web browsing. 

The first Copilot+ PCs will launch on June 18th with Qualcomm processors, with Intel and AMD models to follow later, and will start at $999. Could they challenge the Macbook Air?

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Maker Stacks is our newsletter where we interview founders and find out what products they use in their stacks.

Last week: Kwindla Hultman Kramer.

Kwindla is a founder of Daily, which develops infrastructure and SDKs for video and audio, with customers like ByteDance and Accenture. A former Harvard and MIT grad, Kwindla has been interested in large-scale networked systems and real-time video since his working as a grad student with Mitchel Resnick (founder of Scratch) at MIT Media Lab. Prior to founding his first company, Kwindla worked to advocate for the building of free and open-source software (in the early 2000s when doing so was controversial).

Among Kwindla’s stack, you’ll find LLM tools, video editing software, and more.