Are Copilot+ PCs finally ready for the enterprise?

Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC brand has been out in the wild for over a year, with innovative laptops capturing awe at trade shows like CES and even being deemed ‘cool’ by The New York Times.

Despite being around since 2023, however, most experts believe that 2025 will be the year the AI PC will become the default for enterprise businesses. This is partly down to analyst predictions that the end of Windows 10 will see many IT departments refresh their hardware. But it’s also a story about generative AI and the transformative capabilities that can be put at the fingertips of seemingly everyone.

AI PC shipments are predicted to surpass 100 million units by the end of 2025, according to Canalys forecasts, representing around 40% of all total PC shipments worldwide. What’s more, Canalys experts predict that vendors will ship a further 205 million AI PCs by 2028 – a growth rate of 44% between 2024 and 2028.

“PCs with dedicated on-device AI capabilities will enable new and improved user experiences, driving productivity gains and personalizing devices at scale while offering better power efficiency, stronger security, and reduced costs associated with running AI workloads,” said Ishan Dutt, principal analyst at Canalys.

"This emerging PC category opens new frontiers for both software developers and hardware vendors to innovate and deliver compelling use cases to customers across consumer, commercial, and education scenarios.”

What is a Copilot+ PC?

Copilot is Microsoft’s generative AI assistant – arguably the industry-leading AI chatbot. It’s designed to offer on-device (or in-browser) AI capabilities like text generation, quick analysis, such as email and document summaries, and various helpful shortcuts. It’s instant click AI for workers that will improve the more it’s used.

Copilot+, however, is specifically attributed to personal computers, in that they are laptops and PCs with direct access to Microsoft Copilot, with specific Copilot buttons and AI-based features.

It is a new category of Windows 11 PC, equipped with powerful processors and neural processing units (NPUs) that are capable of over 40 TOPS – trillion operations per second. Specifically, Copilot+ PCs can translate audio in real time (from around 44 different languages), improve images and video, and automatically switch resolution to improve quality.

The branding has been attributed to both new and well-established laptop brands, such as the HP OmniBook and Microsoft’s Surface models. With automated tools for translation, chat-based on-device diagnostic capabilities, and even features that can help the user optimize their machine's performance.

Copilot+ PCs for enterprise businesses

The key thing with AI PCs is that they are disrupting the usual way we experience AI, through cloud services or via cloud-based apps – think background blur and noise cancellation on video conferencing platforms like Teams and Zoom. AI PCs can execute those capabilities, and much more, on-device, regardless of the operating system or apps being used.

Running AI in the cloud is notoriously expensive, and running AI models in-house is also financially tough; you need specific hardware and software, and the labour costs will also be astronomical. So running AI locally, on user devices, is a no-brainer from a budget standpoint – AI PCs, such as the Dell XPS 13 or the HP OmniBook Ultra 14, can cost as little as $1,000.

AI PCs also promise to supercharge the productivity of your workforce; from content creation to code deployment, generative AI apps can provide shortcuts for various tasks, and even automate them to a certain degree, saving hours of labor and freeing users up to do more complex or interesting workloads.

Another key is the Copilot+ requirement for NPUs that offer a minimum of 40 TOPS, which is its measure for performance, specifically AI performance. The NPU is built to handle large volumes of data on the device, taking that burden away from the CPU. A CPU doesn’t necessarily have TOPS; it is solely reserved for the NPU.

The Ryzen Pro 300 series is particularly well suited for AI PCs thanks to its integrated NPU, which is said to surpass the 40 TOPs requirement with 50 TOPs. These are enterprise-focused processors that have been incorporated into the Copilot+ grade of PCs due to their immense speeds and high performance. Specifically, there are three chips, launched in 2024: the Ryzen AI 9 HX Pro 375, the 9 Pro 370, and the 7 Pro 360.

In IDC’s report, Understanding Employee Productivity and Satisfaction Benefits of Next-Generation AI PCs as You Plan Your Next Refresh, these newer, more powerful NPUs have created an environment where AI can run persistently and pervasively in the operating system. And it does so in a way that doesn’t impact the performance of battery life.

What’s more, Copilot+ PCs and the newer NPUs have been designed to specifically support Windows 11 – again, taking full advantage of the end of Windows 10. And Windows Copilot Runtime includes a set of application programming interfaces that use more than 40 on-device AI models that ship with Windows.

Like Forrester and Canalys, IDC is also forecasting a steep increase in AI PCs in the market over the next few years, with the Copilot+ category set to drive much of that growth.

“Companies should consider the benefits of next-generation AI PCs as they build out their AI strategies,” Tom Mainelli, the group vice president of Device and Consumer Research at IDC, wrote in the report.

“Many of these companies are concurrently planning their final push toward a much-needed fleet refresh as the Windows 10 end of service (EOS) approaches in October 2025."

He continued: “Many of these PCs were acquired over four years ago and suffer from aging batteries and a lack of modern collaboration features such as good cameras and microphones. Forward-looking information technology decision-makers (ITDMs) and line-of-business (LOB) managers see the value in investing in this new breed of PCs today to stay ahead of the competition and reap the long-term benefits as new AI features, applications, and use cases appear.”

Smart companies will be closely examining the next-generation of AI PCs as they get set for their next hardware refresh. According to Statcounter, almost half of businesses are still running Windows 10, which suggests a huge market for AI PC adoption as we get closer to the great Windows 10 switch-off. This could mean that 2025 really is the year of the AI PC, and maybe the year for Copliot+ PCs.