By Max A. Cherney and Wen-Yee Lee
TAIPEI, June 1 (Reuters) – Nvidia has unveiled a new chip that puts AI capabilities directly into laptops and desktop computers, pitting it against the likes of Advanced Micro Devices, Intel and Apple.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who is in Taiwan for the Computex conference, said on the Monday that the RTX Spark PC chip is part of Nvidia’s effort with Microsoft to “reinvent the PC” for the AI era after three years of collaboration between the companies.
The chip, which industry experts said would overhaul engagement with AI, is designed to run AI agents locally rather than relying solely on cloud computing.
Huang said Nvidia developed the RTX Spark chip with help from Taiwan’s MediaTek.
“The RTX Spark looks to transform the traditional app-centric PC to a real useful Agentic AI personal computer which will eventually be in every home in coming years as private edge AI agents become pivotal,” said Neil Shah, Counterpoint Research co-founder.
“This is going to be the ‘RTX Spark’ moment for the personal computing segment like how iPhone, ChatGPT or DeepSeek have been.”
The new chip and Nvidia’s Vera central processing unit underscore the company’s increasing focus on PC and CPU products, with Huang spending much of his keynote address highlighting the RTX Spark chip and the Vera CPU.
The Vera CPU is designed for AI agents and its early adopters include OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX, according to the $5 trillion chip company’s boss, who walked on stage in his signature black leather jacket.
Shares of AMD and Intel were down nearly 4% in pre-market U.S. trading while Qualcomm fell almost 7% and Apple was down 0.6%. Microsoft jumped 3.1%, also buoyed by a rebound in software stocks.
MOVING TOWARDS FULLY AUTONOMOUS AGENTS
Huang was speaking ahead of Computex, where leaders of some of the world’s largest technology companies are gathering.
Nvidia’s highlight on AI agents running locally on PC hardware echoed comments laid out by Qualcomm’s CEO Cristiano Amon who also spoke ahead of Computex and framed 2026 as the turning point for agentic AI.
“Two years ago we talked about how AI will change the human computer interface, and as a consequence will change the architecture of all of our personal computing devices. And that is starting to become a reality in 2026. That’s why we call 2026 the year of agents,” he said, adding the industry is moving past AI as a simple prompt-answering tool toward fully autonomous agents.
Amon said the shift to agentic AI makes local edge computing unavoidable, because today’s device architectures were not built for always-on, autonomous operation.
“All of these devices today, they have been built for actions initiated by the user, not by the agents,” he said.
During an earnings call in May, Huang said Nvidia’s new Vera central processors give it access to a new $200 billion market.
“This (Vera CPU) is going to be our new major growth driver,” said Huang during a lengthy speech outlining Nvidia’s latest AI products and highlighting the island’s central role in the global technology industry.
Huang dismissed as “complete nonsense” concerns that AI would reduce demand for software engineers, arguing instead that the technology would drive hiring by making workers more productive.
“This is the promise of AI. The number of engineers, software engineers, is actually increasing. People talk about AI reducing jobs – complete nonsense. It’s causing more software engineers to be hired.”
Huang, who was born in Taiwan’s southern city of Tainan, announced plans last week to invest around $150 billion a year in Taiwan, describing it as the epicentre of the AI revolution.
The speech at the Taipei Music Hall comes around two weeks after he accompanied U.S. President Donald Trump on a visit to Beijing, part of a high-powered corporate delegation, to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
The Computex trade show runs June 2 to 5.
(Reporting by Max A. Cherney and Wen-Yee Lee in Taipei, additional reporting by Liam Mo in Beijing and Aditya Soni in Bangalore; Editing by Anne Marie Roantree, Sonali Paul and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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