Microsoft was the first to put AI on devices with its Copilot launch

Copilot+ PCs marked the first mainstream push to run meaningful AI workloads locally, trading cloud round-trips for instant on-device inference.

NPUs are now a headline spec. The competition between Qualcomm, Intel and AMD silicon is driving rapid efficiency gains.

For developers, the lesson is clear: design features that degrade gracefully between cloud and local execution.