If you’ve been shopping for a new laptop for college, you’ve probably seen stickers saying “AI PC,” “Copilot+,” or “NPU” everywhere. In 2026, AI PCs are expected to make up more than half of all computers shipped worldwide. That’s a huge change in just a couple of years.

But there’s a twist. Just as laptops with powerful NPUs became common, Microsoft changed its strategy so that AI features on Windows don’t depend on the NPU alone. So what is an NPU, why is everyone putting one in their laptops, and do you really need one? Here’s what’s going on, and the engineering lesson behind it.

What’s Happening

Research firm Gartner forecasts 143 million AI PC shipments in 2026, or about 54.7% of the global PC market, up from about 31% in 2025. For laptops specifically, Gartner expects AI models to reach 58.7% of the market. Counterpoint Research reached a similar conclusion, predicting that AI-advanced PCs with NPUs would pass half of global shipments in 2026.

An AI PC is generally defined as a computer with a built-in NPU, a neural processing unit designed to run AI tasks efficiently on the device. At CES 2026, every major laptop chipmaker launched new processors with stronger NPUs: Intel’s Core Ultra Series 3 (up to 50 TOPS), AMD’s Ryzen AI 400 Series (up to 60 TOPS), and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Plus (80 TOPS). TOPS stands for trillions of operations per second, a common way to measure AI speed.

Gartner also expects software makers to follow. By the end of 2026, it predicts 40% of software vendors will prioritize investing in AI features that run on PCs, up from just 2% in 2024.

The Twist: Microsoft Moves Beyond the NPU

When Microsoft introduced Copilot+ PCs, it required an NPU of at least 40 TOPS for the special AI features. Laptop makers raced to meet that bar. But according to PCWorld, by the time those powerful NPUs became common at CES 2026, Microsoft had already shifted direction.

In October 2025, Microsoft said it wanted to bring AI capabilities to all Windows 11 PCs, not only Copilot+ models. It also introduced Windows AI Foundry, which can run AI on the GPU, the CPU, or the NPU, whichever fits best. PCWorld also noted that only a limited set of features, such as webcam effects, image generation, and Windows Recall, currently make heavy use of the NPU.

That doesn’t make NPUs useless. They’re still the most power-efficient way to run many AI tasks, which matters for battery life. But it shows that hardware only becomes valuable when software actually takes advantage of it.

What Students Should Know

If you’re buying a laptop for college, an NPU is a nice bonus, not a must-have. For most engineering and programming courses, the things that matter more are enough RAM, a good CPU, decent battery life, and, if you plan to train AI models or work with graphics, a capable GPU. Since most new mid-range laptops in 2026 come with an NPU anyway, you’ll likely get one without paying extra.

The bigger lesson is about how technology really works. A chip feature, no matter how powerful, only matters if the operating system, drivers, and apps are designed to use it. That’s why the best engineers don’t think about hardware and software separately. They ask how the whole system works together.

This is exactly the kind of thinking computer engineering teaches. You learn how processors, accelerators, and memory are designed, and also how the software on top makes use of them. Questions like “Should this AI task run on the CPU, GPU, or NPU?” are real engineering decisions that companies are making right now.

Key Takeaways

AI PCs are expected to make up about 55% of global PC shipments in 2026, according to Gartner, with 143 million units, and new chips from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm offer NPUs of 50–80 TOPS. At the same time, Microsoft has moved toward running AI on the CPU, GPU, or NPU, so the NPU is useful but not the whole story. The real value comes from hardware and software designed to work together.

Sources