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Panos Panay, chief product officer of Microsoft Corp., displays the new Surface Laptop 3 computer during a Microsoft product event in New York on Oct. 2, 2019. Microsoft unveiled a dual-screen, foldable phone that will run on Google’s Android operating system, jumping back into a market it exited years ago.

Mark Kauzlarich | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Microsoft made a splash in 2012 when it introduced the Surface, the first computer it had built in its 37 years of existence. The computers are still kicking 10 years later, with Microsoft issuing annual updates, but Surface’s mega-growth is long in the past.

Microsoft tried to reimagine tablets, which are made popular by the iPad, when it launched into the PC market. In 2012, the Surface with Windows RT, later named Surface RT, was more than just a touchscreen slab like Apple’s iPad. The Surface could act as a full PC with an optional cover featuring a keyboard and trackpad.

Apple in the ensuing years would make the iPad more like the Surface, adding similar accessories, while Microsoft would do what it usually does: Roll out a series of small updates. It later added new Surface computers to the family, including an all-in-one PC, a standard laptop and miniature versions of the Surface.

Those steps have brought about growth. In Microsoft’s most recent fiscal year, Surface kicked in $6.7 billion of the company’s $198 billion in total revenue. That’s more than the total revenue of over 100 companies in the S&P 500 index.

But the hyper-growth vanished after the first three years. In the 2022 fiscal year, Surface revenue increased by 3%, despite being smaller than PC initiatives at several other companies. Apple’s Mac business, at almost $38 billion, grew about 8% over the same period.

Surfaces just aren’t as popular as other computers. They have never managed to take more than 2.1% market share of PC shipments, according to an estimate from technology industry researcher Gartner. Lenovo has a 25% share of the market, while HP has 19% and Dell has 18%, respectively.

Microsoft declined to comment on whether it considers Surface successful.

“We design Surface to be the one place where the best of Microsoft comes together, delighting customers and inspiring the Windows ecosystem,” a spokesperson told CNBC in an email. “Surface began as a tablet to replace your laptop, showcasing Windows capabilities like touch, ink, Windows Hello, and more. Since then, the 2-in-1 category has taken off and Surface has grown into an innovative portfolio of products offering premium designs and capabilities that consistently earn high customer satisfaction.” 

That Surface has not surpassed more experienced PC makers might not be such a bad thing anyway. PC builders are among Microsoft’s most prominent clients because they pay Microsoft a fee for the copy of Windows that goes on each computer. Upstaging them might not be wise.

Surface has held on to an important role — bringing to market Windows PCs with fresh designs, Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa told CNBC in an interview.

“I think those are the things they should really focus on, instead of looking for share gain and revenue growth,” she said.

If Microsoft were to charge forward in pursuit of dominant share, they could kill their customers, she said. Kitagawa recalled that Windows PC makers were not very happy with Microsoft when the first Surfaces arrived. “Taking 3% share was taking from somebody, right? That’s not incremental share,” she said.

Premium feel

Microsoft Corp.’s Surface tablet computers, aiming to compete with Apple’s iPad, are displayed at Hollywood’s Milk Studios in Los Angeles Monday, June 18, 2012. The 9.3-millimeter thick tablet comes with a kickstand to hold it upright and keyboard that is part of the device’s cover. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Damian Dovarganes

The first line of the news release about the 2012 Surface showed Microsoft’s intent. These computers were meant to be “the ultimate stage for Windows.” A section near the bottom acknowledged the clients that were suddenly becoming the competition. “Microsoft is delivering a unique contribution to an already strong and growing ecosystem of functional and stylish devices delivered by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to bring the experience of Windows to consumers and businesses around the globe,” the company said.

The inaugural Surface, the Surface RT running Windows RT, boasted clever physical attributes. A thin but sturdy kickstand could sweep out and prop up the display on a table or a desk. The case was made out of magnesium in a process called VaporMg, which lends it a premium feel akin to the aluminum wrapping up Apple’s MacBooks. An optional magnetic Touch Cover contained a narrow keyboard and a trackpad that doubled as a cover for the display. A power-sipping Arm chip gave it respectable battery life.

But the Surface RT blocked people from opening programs that weren’t listed in Microsoft’s app store, preventing them from using most existing Windows software. Basically, there wasn’t a lot you could do with it, and many third-party developers hadn’t done the work to adapt their software to it. The device garnered less than glowing reviews, with The Verge calling it “honestly perplexing.” “Little inconsistencies and bafflements are everywhere,” The New York Times’ David Pogue wrote.

Microsoft Surface with Windows 8 Pro

Source: Microsoft.com

In 2013 Microsoft brought out the Surface RT’s more expensive and more powerful sibling, the Surface Pro. It contained a stylus, along with an Intel chip that could run real Windows programs, with stronger performance than the Surface RT.

For Microsoft to put forth a more traditional Intel-based Windows PC would be bold. It would directly challenge some of the company’s top clients. “It did not seem prudent,” Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft’s Windows division who left the company in 2012, wrote in “Hardcore Software,” a detailed recollection of his experience that he’s been publishing in parts on Substack. Windows was Microsoft’s main source of profit. If even one of the major Windows device makers were to stop building Windows PCs, that would be, in Sinofsky’s words, “a massive problem.”

Microsoft pressed on anyway.

Like the Arm-based Surface RT, the Intel-powered Surface Pro wasn’t perfect. It could only run for a few hours on a single charge, and it was heavy and impractical to use as a tablet. And regular laptops offered better keyboards than those that Microsoft sold separately for the Surface Pro.

Cutting into profit

Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Go 2 starts at $599.

Microsoft

A few months later Microsoft revealed a black eye. It trimmed the price of the Surface RT by $150 to $349 and instituted inventory adjustments for related parts and accessories, which resulted in a $596 million reduction in its quarterly net income.

But Microsoft did what it usually does. It stuck with the Surface line instead of ditching a challenged brand. It rolled out refinements, such as making the hinge on the back of the tablet adjustable and changing the aspect ratio in such a way that work became more comfortable in landscape orientation.

  1. By 2015, Microsoft had walked away from Windows RT and was focused on building devices with Intel chips that could run standard Windows applications.

Meanwhile, copycats were coming out from top PC makers such as Dell, HP and Lenovo. And Apple was also responding, rolling out the laptop-like 12.9-inch iPad Pro and compatible Apple Pencil stylus and Smart Keyboard cover in 2015.

It was a strong dose of validation for Microsoft. In 2012, before the Surface came out, and there were only rumors of Microsoft’s plans for Windows, Apple CEO Tim Cook told analysts that “you can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user.”

Yet in 2017, Apple, perhaps Microsoft’s toughest corporate critic, capitulated. It came out with a toaster-refrigerator combo of its own, said Michael Gartenberg, a technology industry strategist and former Gartner analyst. “It’s clearly become a mainstream design,” Gartenberg said.

Also that year Microsoft introduced the Surface Laptop. While it was as boring as any other laptop, it left out the software that sometimes could burden Windows PCs from other manufacturers, the sorts of things end users might want to spend time deleting, Gartenberg said.

Microsoft Corp. surface 5 laptop computers on display at the company’s Ignite Spotlight event in Seoul, South Korea, on Nov. 15, 2022. CEO Satya Nadella gave a keynote speech at an event hosted by the company’s Korean unit.

SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Images

In 2019, Microsoft took another shot at an Arm-based Surface, with the Surface Pro X. Reviewers gave it credit for long battery life but dinged it for performance and compatibility reasons, not unlike the original Surface RT.

This year, Microsoft made things more complex by introducing an Intel-based Surface Pro 9 along with an Arm-based version, which put an end to the distinct brand for Arm-flavored Surface. People have fretted that the Arm model of the Pro 9 is still unable to run some programs. The Intel version has received more praise. “The removal of the headphone jack is the only new thing that’s wrong with it,” Ars Technica said in its review.

Those who opt for the Surface Pro 9 with an Arm chip can at least access a broad swath of apps. The 2022 update to Windows 11 includes a way to run over 50,000 Android apps through the Amazon Appstore.

If you look at it for just a second, the Surface Pro 9 with Intel inside looks a bit like the 10-year-old Surface RT. Changes inside and out have made it tougher to dismiss as a novelty. There’s a button to enable the Function row on the keyboard, which boasts a more responsive trackpad. Enhancements to Windows make it easier to tap buttons on the screen when using the Surface as a tablet. You can open the programs you need.

Surface Pro 9, Surface Laptop 5 and Surface Studio 2+.

Microsoft

Gartenberg, who lives in New Jersey, doesn’t see many people using Surfaces in the real world, although he did recently witness a man working on a Surface while walking around outside. The man was wearing a harness that held the Surface just off his chest, so he could tap on the screen when necessary, Gartenberg said.

There’s one place you’ll certainly see them, though. During televised games, you can spot players, coaches and referees using branded Surface machines at National Football League games as a result of a partnership Microsoft struck with the NFL in 2013.

Buffalo Bills defensive line coach Eric Washington reviews plays on a Microsoft Surface tablet

Robin Alam | Icon Sportswire | Getty Images

In the course of a decade, Microsoft has managed to raise the bar for Windows PC makers, demonstrating that a top tier of Windows can exist, Gartenberg said.

“If someone said to me, ‘I need a Windows PC,’ what would I recommend? I would say, ‘Go see what Microsoft is offering. Go see if that meets your needs,'” he said. “‘It’s not going to come with any junk you’re going to call me about, and it will just work.'”

‘No compromise whatsoever’

Surface Pro 9.

Microsoft

The Microsoft Surface Go is a good computer, but a very bad tablet

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Silicon Valley’s early return on Trump investment: Plunging valuations, delayed IPOs

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Silicon Valley's early return on Trump investment: Plunging valuations, delayed IPOs

The Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, June 9, 2023.

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Silicon Valley executives and financiers publicly opened their wallets in support of President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential run. The early returns in 2025 aren’t great, to say the least.

Following Trump’s sweeping tariff plan announced Wednesday, the Nasdaq suffered steep consecutive daily drops to finish 10% lower for the week, the index’s worst performance since the beginning of the Covid pandemic in 2020.

The tech industry’s leading CEO’s rushed to contribute to Trump’s inauguration in January and paraded to Washington, D.C., for the event. Since then, it’s been a slog.

The market can always turn around, but economists and investors aren’t optimistic, and concerns are building of a potential recession. The seven most valuable U.S. tech companies lost a combined $1.8 trillion in market cap in two days.

Apple slid 14% for the week, its biggest drop in more than five years. Tesla, led by top Trump adviser Elon Musk, plunged 9.2% and is now down more than 40% for the year. Musk contributed close to $300 million to help propel Trump back to the White House.

Nvidia, Meta and Amazon all suffered double-digit drops for the week. For Amazon, a ninth straight weekly decline marks its longest such losing streak since 2008.

With Wall Street selling out of risky assets on concern that widespread tariff hikes will punish the U.S. and global economy, the fallout has drifted down to the IPO market. Online lender Klarna and ticketing marketplace StubHub delayed their IPOs due to market turbulence, just weeks after filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and fintech company Chime is also reportedly delaying its listing.

CoreWeave, a provider of artificial intelligence infrastructure, last week became the first venture-backed company to raise more than $1 billion in a U.S. IPO since 2021. But the company slashed its offering, and trading has been very volatile in its opening days on the market. The stock plunged 12% on Friday, leaving it 17% above its offer price but below the bottom of its initial range.

“You couldn’t create a worse market and macro environment to go public,” said Phil Haslett, co-founder of EquityZen, a platform for investing in private companies. “Way too much turbulence. All flights are grounded until further notice.”

CoreWeave investor Mark Klein of SuRo Capital previously told CNBC that the company could be the first in an “IPO parade.” Now he’s backtracking.

“It appears that the IPO parade has been temporarily halted,” Klein told CNBC by email on Friday. “The current tariff situation has prompted these companies to pause and assess its impact.”

Tech will see an 'economic armageddon' if these tariffs stay, says Wedbush's Dan Ives

‘Cave rapidly’

During last year’s presidential campaign, prominent venture capitalists like Marc Andreessen backed Trump, expecting that his administration would usher in a boom and eliminate some of the hurdles to startup growth set up by the Biden administration. Andreessen and his partner, Ben Horowitz, said in July that their financial support of the Trump campaign was due to what they called a better “little tech agenda.”

A spokesperson for Andreessen Horowitz declined to comment.

Some techies who supported Trump in the campaign have taken to social media to defend their positions.

Venture capitalist Keith Rabois, a managing director at Khosla Ventures, posted on X on Thursday that “Trump Derangement Syndrome has morphed into Tariff Derangement Syndrome.” He said tariffs aren’t inflationary, are effective at reducing fentanyl imports, and he expects that “most other countries will cave and cave rapidly.”

That was before China’s Finance Ministry said on Friday that it will impose a 34% tariff on all goods imported from the U.S. starting on April 10.

At Sequoia Capital, which is the biggest investor in Klarna, outspoken Trump supporter Shaun Maguire, wrote on X, “The first long-term thinking President of my lifetime,” and said in a separate post that, “The price of stocks says almost nothing about the long term health of an economy.”

However, Allianz Chief Economic Advisor Mohamed El-Erian warned on Friday that Trump’s extensive raft of import tariffs are putting the U.S. economy at risk of recession.

“You’ve had a major repricing of growth prospects, with a recession in the U.S. going up to 50% probability, you’ve seen an increase in inflation expectations, up to 3.5%,” he told CNBC’s Silvia Amaro on the sidelines of the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, Italy.

Former Microsoft CEOs Bill Gates, left, and Steve Ballmer, center, pose for photos with CEO Satya Nadella during an event celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Microsoft on April 4, 2025 in Redmond, Washington. 

Stephen Brashear | Getty Images

Meanwhile, executives at tech’s megacap companies were largely silent this week, and their public relations representatives declined to provide comments about their thinking.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was in the awkward position on Friday of celebrating his company’s 50th anniversary at corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Alongside Microsoft’s prior two CEOs, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Nadella sat down with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin for a televised interview that was planned well before Trump’s tariff announcement.

When asked about the tariffs at the top of the interview, Nadella effectively dodged the question and avoided expressing his views about whether the new policies will hamper Microsoft’s business.

Ballmer, who was succeeded by Nadella in 2014, acknowledged to Sorkin that “disruption is very hard on people” and that, “as a Microsoft shareholder, this kind of thing is not good.” Ballmer and Gates are two of the 12 wealthiest people in the world thanks to their Microsoft fortunes.

C-suites may not be able to stay quiet for long, especially if the recent turmoil spills into next week.

Lise Buyer, who previously helped guide Google through its IPO and now works as an adviser to companies going public, said there’s no appetite for risk in the market under these conditions. But there is risk that staffers get jittery, and they’ll surely look to their leaders for some reassurance.

“Until markets settle out and we have the opportunity to access valuation levels, public company CEOs should work to calm potentially distressed employees,” Buyer said in an email. “And private company managements should refine plans to get by on dollars already in the treasury.”

— CNBC’s Hayden Field, Jordan Novet, Leslie Picker, Annie Palmer and Samantha Subin contributed to this report.

WATCH: Chime is reportedly delaying its IPO

Chime is reportedly delaying its IPO

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Tesla’s June robotaxi deadline looms as political backlash builds over Elon Musk

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Tesla's June robotaxi deadline looms as political backlash builds over Elon Musk

Elon Musk has been promising investors for about a decade that Tesla’s cars are on the verge of turning into robotaxis, capable of driving themselves cross-country, after one big software update.

That hasn’t happened yet.

What Tesla offers is a sophisticated, but only partially automated, driving system that’s marketed in the U.S. as its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) option, though many Tesla fans refer to it as FSD. In China, Tesla recently changed the system’s name to “intelligent assisted driving.”

Full Self-Driving, as it was previously called, relies on cameras and software to enable features like automatic navigation on highways and city streets, or automatic braking and slowing in response to traffic lights and stop signs.

Tesla owner’s manuals warn users that FSD “is a hands-on feature” that requires them to pay attention to the road at all times. “Keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times, be mindful of road conditions and surrounding traffic,” the manuals say.

But many of Tesla’s customers ignore the fine print and use the system hands-free anyway.

Tesla’s partially automated driving systems have been a source of inspiration for its stalwart fans. But they’ve also caused controversy and concern for public safety after reports of injurious and fatal collisions where Tesla’s standard Autopilot or premium FSD systems were known to be in use.

FSD does a lot of things “amazingly well,” said Guy Mangiamele, a professional test driver for automotive consulting firm AMCI Testing, during a recent long drive in Los Angeles. But he added that “the times that it trips up, you could kill somebody or you could hurt yourself.”

The pressure has never been higher on Tesla to elevate the technology and deliver on Musk’s long-delayed promises.

The Tesla CEO is the wealthiest person in the world and was the biggest financial backer of President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign. Since Trump’s January inauguration, Musk has been leading the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency effort to drastically slash the federal workforce and government spending.

The DOGE team has been connected to more than 280,000 layoff plans for federal workers and contractors impacting 27 agencies over the last two months, according to data tracked by Challenger Gray, the executive outplacement firm.

Musk’s work with DOGE – along with his frequently incendiary political rhetoric and endorsement of Germany’s far-right, anti-immigrant party AfD – has led to a tremendous backlash against Tesla.

Protests, boycotts and even criminal acts of vandalism have targeted the electric vehicle maker in recent months and led many prospective Tesla customers to turn to other brands. Meanwhile, existing Tesla owners have been trading in their EVs at record levels, according to data from Edmunds.

Tesla’s stock dropped 36% through the first three months of 2025, representing its steepest decline since 2022 and third-biggest slide for any quarter since the EV maker went public in June 2010. Tesla also reported 336,681 vehicle deliveries in the first quarter of 2025, a 13% decline from the same period a year ago.

Product unveilings and a “robotaxi launch” expected from Tesla in Austin, Texas, this year could revitalize investors’ sentiment about the company and hopefully lift its share price, Piper Sandler analysts wrote in a note following the worse-than-expected deliveries report.

On Tesla’s last earnings call, Musk promised investors that Tesla will finally start its driverless ride-hailing service in Austin in June.

To see whether the company’s FSD technology is anywhere close to a robotaxi-ready release, CNBC spent months riding along with Tesla owners who use Full Self-Driving (Supervised) and speaking with automotive safety experts about their impressions.

Auto-tech enthusiast and Tesla owner Chris Lee, host of the YouTube channel EverydayChris, told CNBC that Tesla’s system “definitely has a ways to go, but the fact that it’s able to go from where it was three years ago to today, is insane.”

Many experts, including Telemetry Vice President of Market Research Sam Abuelsamid, remain skeptical. There’s been “no evidence” that FSD is “anywhere close to being ready to be used in an unsupervised form” by June, said Abuelsamid, whose firms specializes in automotive intelligence.

Tesla FSD will “often work really well, particularly in daytime conditions” but then “randomly, in a scenario where it did fine previously, it will fail,” said Abuelsamid, adding that those scenarios can be unpredictable and dangerous.

Watch the video to learn more about the evolution of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) and whether it will be robotaxi-ready this June.

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Microsoft AI chief Suleyman sees advantage in building models ‘3 or 6 months behind’

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Microsoft AI chief Suleyman sees advantage in building models ‘3 or 6 months behind’

Microsoft owns lots of Nvidia graphics processing units, but it isn’t using them to develop state-of-the-art artificial intelligence models.

There are good reasons for that position, Mustafa Suleyman, the company’s CEO of AI, told CNBC’s Steve Kovach in an interview on Friday. Waiting to build models that are “three or six months behind” offers several advantages, including lower costs and the ability to concentrate on specific use cases, Suleyman said.

It’s “cheaper to give a specific answer once you’ve waited for the first three or six months for the frontier to go first. We call that off-frontier,” he said. “That’s actually our strategy, is to really play a very tight second, given the capital-intensiveness of these models.”

Suleyman made a name for himself as a co-founder of DeepMind, the AI lab that Google bought in 2014, reportedly for $400 million to $650 million. Suleyman arrived at Microsoft last year alongside other employees of the startup Inflection, where he had been CEO.

More than ever, Microsoft counts on relationships with other companies to grow.

It gets AI models from San Francisco startup OpenAI and supplemental computing power from newly public CoreWeave in New Jersey. Microsoft has repeatedly enriched Bing, Windows and other products with OpenAI’s latest systems for writing human-like language and generating images.

Microsoft’s Copilot will gain “memory” to retain key facts about people who repeatedly use the assistant, Suleyman said Friday at an event in Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters to commemorate the company’s 50th birthday. That feature came first to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which has 500 million weekly users.

Through ChatGPT, people can access top-flight large language models such as the o1 reasoning model that takes time before spitting out an answer. OpenAI introduced that capability in September — only weeks later did Microsoft bring a similar capability called Think Deeper to Copilot.

Microsoft occasionally releases open-source small-language models that can run on PCs. They don’t require powerful server GPUs, making them different from OpenAI’s o1.

OpenAI and Microsoft have held a tight relationship shortly after the startup launched its ChatGPT chatbot in late 2022, effectively kicking off the generative AI race. In total, Microsoft has invested $13.75 billion in the startup, but more recently, fissures in the relationship between the two companies have begun to show.

Microsoft added OpenAI to its list of competitors in July 2024, and OpenAI in January announced that it was working with rival cloud provider Oracle on the $500 billion Stargate project. That came after years of OpenAI exclusively relying on Microsoft’s Azure cloud. Despite OpenAI partnering with Oracle, Microsoft in a blog post announced that the startup had “recently made a new, large Azure commitment.”

“Look, it’s absolutely mission-critical that long-term, we are able to do AI self-sufficiently at Microsoft,” Suleyman said. “At the same time, I think about these things over five and 10 year periods. You know, until 2030 at least, we are deeply partnered with OpenAI, who have [had an] enormously successful relationship for us.

Microsoft is focused on building its own AI internally, but the company is not pushing itself to build the most cutting-edge models, Suleyman said.

“We have an incredibly strong AI team, huge amounts of compute, and it’s very important to us that, you know, maybe we don’t develop the absolute frontier, the best model in the world first,” he said. “That’s very, very expensive to do and unnecessary to cause that duplication.”

WATCH: Microsoft Copilot beginning of a seismic shift in AI integration, says Microsoft AI CEO Suleyman

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