Building the next generation of devices for developers: Surface RTX Spark Dev Box
Software developers are some of the most ambitious makers we serve. They push devices harder, ask more of their tools and expect their environment to help define the pace of modern software creation. Development today means longer running jobs, larger models and a growing need to prototype and iterate locally rather than paying for every cloud call. That is why we embarked on a project to build two new Surface devices designed specifically for the needs of these makers.
Earlier this week, we introduced Surface Laptop Ultra, a high-performance laptop built for developers, creators and technical professionals who need serious performance wherever they work. Today at Microsoft Build, we are introducing Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, a compact developer PC engineered with NVIDIA RTX Spark superchip and built on the Windows developer platform, designed for local-first AI development. Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is for developers who want to prototype, fine-tune and run capable models on their desk, and reach for the cloud when the work calls for it.
Together, Surface Laptop Ultra and Surface RTX Spark Dev Box represent the next step for Surface: purpose-built devices for the people building what’s next.
A new category of Surface, built for developers
The way developers build software is fundamentally changing. AI models are growing in capability and complexity, agentic workflows demand sustained compute, and every iteration can incur cloud costs, even when the work doesn’t require state-of-the-art models. Surface RTX Spark Dev Box changes that equation. It’s a purpose-built Windows AI developer box that puts up to 1 petaflop of AI compute directly on the desk. By bringing powerful AI compute to the edge, developers can reserve frontier model calls for truly frontier problems and handle the rest on their own hardware. The result is a development workflow that can be more efficient and responsive, with developers in control of where their compute dollars go.
Sustained AI performance in a compact form factor
At the heart of this new developer machine is the NVIDIA RTX Spark superchip, combining a powerful NVIDIA Blackwell RTX GPU and an ultra-efficient NVIDIA Grace CPU to deliver up to 1 petaflop of AI compute with 128 GB of unified memory. That’s enough compute power to run 120B+ parameter models with 1 million token context locally at interactive speeds or fine-tune models that previously required cloud GPU instancesi.
With an aluminum chassis engineered to double as a heatsink, Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is designed for the workloads that matter most to developers: long-running training jobs, large model inference and complex agentic pipelines that benefit from consistent, sustained performance.
Built for the tools and workflows developers already use, out of the box
Surface RTX Spark Dev Box ships with Windows 11 Pro pre-configured for developers at the image level. This brings a purposeful set of defaults, preinstalled tools and tuned settings so the development environment is the default from first sign-in.
The setup keeps developers in their workflow: dark theme, taskbar simplified for development, Widgets removed, Do Not Disturb on. Developer Mode is enabled. PowerShell 7 is the default shell.
Under the hood, WSL 2 is configured with GPU passthrough and CUDA support. VS Code, GitHub Copilot, Git, Python and Node.js are installed. Your favorite IDEs, agents, coding assistants, frameworks and libraries all work on Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, whether you prefer the Windows side or WSL.
Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is also a world class entry point to the rest of the Microsoft AI stack. AI Toolkit for VS Code brings model conversion, fine-tuning and evaluation into the editor developers already use. Windows ML with TensorRT, and Windows Copilot Runtime give you a consistent local inference surface. Microsoft Foundry connects local prototyping to production deployment, so the model you tune locally ships through the same tools and identity you use every day. GitHub Copilot scales from CLI to enterprise on the same machine.
That is what we mean by best Microsoft experience for developers: the local box, the OS, the developer tools and the cloud platform working as one stack.
Secure by design
For developers working with sensitive models, proprietary data and valuable IP, security isn’t optional. It’s foundational. The powerful GPU and unified memory mean more of your models and IP can stay local and lets developers keep more of their models and data local.
Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is built on chip-to-cloud security aligned with Microsoft’s Zero Trust principles:
- Secured-core PC architecture
- BitLocker encryption
- Microsoft Defender protection
For organizations, Surface RTX Spark Dev Box integrates with Entra ID and Intune for management and governance at scale.
With Surface Laptop Ultra and Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, we’re expanding the Surface line with two products built specifically for makers. Surface Laptop Ultra is built for high-performance work that moves with you, from compiling and debugging to creative production and AI experimentation, while Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is built for the local compute developers need when models, agents and long-running workloads belong on the desk. Different form factors, same direction: giving developers the best option and more choice in where and how they build.
Surface RTX Spark Dev Box will be available later this year in the U.S. exclusively on Microsoft.com. Learn more at microsoft.com/devboxii.
i Source: NVIDIA. Based on 1 Theoretical FP4 TOPS using the sparsity feature.
ii Microsoft Surface RTX Spark Dev Box and Surface Laptop Ultra are pre-release products. Products and features are subject to regulatory certification/approval; actual sale and delivery is contingent on compliance with applicable requirements.