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Microsoft quietly drops Copilot+ branding from its new laptops after two years — Surface CVP confirms new devices meet hardware requirements but lack controversial branding Few will mourn the passing of Copilot+. 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. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds. Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics. - SonoraTechnical Microsoft lost it's mojo in the consumer space a long time ago... I think XBox, Surface, Office, and Windows are the only branding exercise that have stuck long-term throughout the years....Reply They've killed Zune, Skype, Kinect, Cortana, Windows Phone , Bob, Kin, Internet Explorer, Grove Music, Yammer... just to name a few... and now CoPilot. - Math Geek They're not killing Copilot. People don't want it and are avoiding it. So you take the name off the box and sneak it in instead. YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED!!!Reply - USAFRet Reply In every large company, there are product lines that don't survive.SonoraTechnical said:Microsoft lost it's mojo in the consumer space a long time ago... I think XBox, Surface, Office, and Windows are the only branding exercise that have stuck long-term throughout the years.... They've killed Zune, Skype, Kinect, Cortana, Windows Phone , Bob, Kin, Internet Explorer, Grove Music, Yammer... just to name a few... and now CoPilot. Its not the end of the world. - usertests Reply Narrator: "It was, in fact, the end of the world."USAFRet said:In every large company, there are product lines that don't survive. Its not the end of the world. - ezst036 Reply Pretty much - Microsoft has already announced that Windows 12 will be agentic and all of that. It could be that they will change course. But it is unlikely.Math Geek said:They're not killing Copilot. People don't want it and are avoiding it. So you take the name off the box and sneak it in instead. YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED!!! Copilot is gaining ninja status. But Copilot will remain everywhere pretty much the same. Ninja vanish. - ravewulf With them officially allowing people to remap the Copilot key and now the shift away from Copilot+ branding, I really hope we see them ditch the Copilot key next. I don't expect it to happen overnight, though.Reply
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