Nvidia pursues $200 billion CPU market with AI agent PCs from Microsoft, Dell and HP

Nvidia opened Taipei's massive Computex show on Sunday with a spark, literally. The chipmaker unveiled a new CPU for PCs called RTX Spark, which it dubbed a "superchip," and named a list of PC makers that will soon deliver AI PCs powered by it.

The ultra-fast 1 petaflop chip is designed to safely run AI agents like OpenClaw or Hermes Agent, according to Nvidia. Such RTX Spark Windows PCs will be available this fall from ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft Surface and MSI, with models from Acer and Gigabyte to follow.

In addition to being equipped with secure sandboxes (developed jointly with Microsoft) to run agents securely, PCs will also have sufficient CPU, GPU, RAM, and underlying Nvidia CUDA software to run local versions of large language models.

Nvidia said its RTX technology will deliver faster AI performance, better image quality, and support for AI features in more than 1,000 games and apps.

The chipmaker is marketing it as an alternative for creators creating AI content, while providing a significant upgrade to its traditional gamer market. Nvidia said more than 100 Windows software makers have committed to supporting the new chip, including Adobe, Blender, ComfyUI, Riot Games and Xbox.

But Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang's vision for these new PCs is much bigger. He wants to end the days of launching apps, pointing, clicking and typing.

“With RTX Spark and Microsoft Windows, you ask – and the PC does the work,” he said in the press release. "Frontier models. Creative workflows. RTX gaming. All on one laptop."

Last month, after delivering another record quarter, Huang promised investors that he had found a new $200 billion market for Nvidia by selling processors for AI, not just GPUs. He specifically mentioned the high-end server processor launched earlier this year, called Vera, which Nvidia says it has already sold for $20 billion.

He also hinted at his biggest ambitions. "We will have billions of agents, and those billions of agents will all use tools. And those tools will be like PCs, just like we humans use PCs today," he said during the May earnings conference call. “We’re going to need a lot more processors.”

Nvidia ARM-based Windows devices have already been tried – and failed. In 2013, Microsoft had to write off $900 million worth of its Nvidia ARM-based Surface RT, with partners like Dell also walking away from the product.

But at this point, after posting record after record in quarterly revenue, it's hard to bet against Huang as he chases his PC dreams again.

And this chip is a totally different beast. It's more powerful, not less. Microsoft is positioning its own RTX Spark PC as so powerful that it has named it Surface Laptop Ultra and is calling it "the most powerful Surface laptop ever built."

Still, PC makers haven't released many details about each of their offerings, including pricing. These systems appear to be full-fledged Windows versions of the DGX Spark minicomputer that Nvidia already sells to developers for around $4,800.

We'll have to wait and see if these PCs will compete on price with the affordable Mac Mini that has become a popular choice for running OpenClaw. Or maybe they'll be at the high end of the PC market, like Nvidia's Agents-running minicomputer.

Either way, if Nvidia has cracked the code to making AI agents easy, safe, and useful to the general public, it could – and should – matter.