The great NPU failure: Two years later, local AI is still all about GPUs

For the last few years, the term “AI PC” has basically meant little more than “a lightweight portable laptop with a neural processing unit (NPU) .” Today, two years after the glitzy launch of NPUs with Intel’s Meteor Lake hardware , these AI PCs still feel like glorified tech demos.

But local AI is here! And it’s impressive. It just has nothing to do with NPUs. Indeed, if all you have is an NPU, you’d think local AI has failed. The reality is that local AI tools are more capable than ever—but you wouldn’t know it because they run on GPUs instead of NPUs.

NPUs were supposed to usher in a new era of local AI on laptops and PCs. Turns out, the big push for NPUs has failed spectacularly.

NPUs have failed to deliver local AI (so far)

Neural processing units work. They can even power so