Microsoft has notified media that the company will be holding an event on the morning of May 20 where CEO Satya Nadella will discuss the company’s “AI vision across hardware and software.”

The event, reports The Verge, will unveil the tech giant’s vision for “AI PCs”.

Microsoft now believes that a new set of ARM-powered Windows laptops will beat Apple’s M3-powered MacBook Air both in CPU performance as well as AI-accelerated tasks.

Microsoft also contends that the upcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processors will effectively take on Apple. The Snapdragon X Elite processors will ship in a variety of Windows laptops this year and its Surface hardware.

To display the processor’s prowess, Microsoft is also reportedly planning several demos to showcase how these processors are faster than an M3 MacBook Air for CPU tasks, app emulation and AI acceleration. Microsoft even claims that these new Windows AI PCs will have “faster app emulation than Rosetta 2”.

Further reports indicate that Microsoft will ship consumer models of its upcoming Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite processors inside instead of Intel’s Core Ultra chips.

Microsoft refers to devices running Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processors as “next-gen AI Copilot PCs”. These new PCs will be the first to get access to new AI-powered Windows features including an AI Explorer app that lets you “retrieve anything you’ve ever seen or done on your device.”

Reinforcing its mission to drive AI functionality into PCs, Microsoft is believed to be forecasting that 50 per cent of new Windows devices will be running AI-capable chips by the end of 2026.