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How can AI PCs help organizations build a smarter, more productive workforce

Picture of Zones Zones : Sep 18, 2026, 9:28:24 AM

Microsoft

How can AI PCs help organizations build a smarter, more productive workforce

AI is no longer something organizations can treat as a future technology initiative. It is already changing how employees create, analyze, communicate, and make decisions, and it is creating new expectations for the technology supporting them.

Gartner forecasts worldwide AI spending will reach $2.59 trillion in 2026, a 47% increase from 2025. More than 45% of that spending is expected to go toward AI infrastructure, including processors, devices, servers, and other technologies needed to support AI workloads.

For business and IT leaders, however, the challenge isn't simply deciding how much to invest in AI. It's determining where AI should run, how employees will use it, how endpoints will be secured and managed, and whether technology investments will translate into measurable business outcomes.

That's putting the PC back into the strategic conversation.

Why are PCs becoming part of the AI strategy?

For years, organizations have treated the PC primarily as an endpoint for accessing applications and cloud services. AI is changing that model.

As AI capabilities move into productivity, collaboration, security, and creative applications, the device itself increasingly needs to be capable of handling AI workloads.

An AI PC brings dedicated AI processing to the endpoint through a combination of CPU, GPU, and NPU capabilities. This allows supported AI workloads to be processed locally rather than relying entirely on cloud-based computing.

Intel® Core™ Ultra processors, for example, combine CPU, GPU, and NPU processing to support AI-enabled experiences while balancing performance and power efficiency.

This isn't a niche shift. Gartner projected that AI PCs would account for 31% of worldwide PC shipments in 2025, with 77.8 million units expected to ship. Its latest forecast puts AI PCs at 55% of the PC market in 2026, or approximately 143 million units.

For organizations approaching a device refresh, this raises a more important question:

Should the next generation of business PCs simply replace today's devices, or should they become part of the organization's AI-ready infrastructure?

What can an AI PC actually do for employees?

For executives, the value of an AI PC shouldn't be measured by specifications alone. The more important consideration is how the device can improve the way people work.

Accelerate content creation

Employees across marketing, sales, design, communications, consulting, and other functions increasingly use AI to create and refine content.

AI PCs can support AI-enabled applications for tasks such as image enhancement, video editing, text creation, and other content workflows.

Intel reports that Intel® Core™ Ultra processor-based AI PCs can deliver up to 63% better performance for AI-enhanced creative tasks such as video editing, depending on the workload and configuration. Intel also highlights AI-assisted productivity, text and image creation, photo editing, and collaboration.

For businesses, that can mean reducing time spent waiting for demanding tasks to process and giving employees more responsive tools for content creation and everyday work.

Support everyday productivity

AI is also changing the type of work employees can accomplish.

Microsoft's 2026 Work Trend Index analyzed more than 100,000 Microsoft 365 Copilot conversations and found that 49% involved cognitive work, including analyzing information, solving problems, evaluating options, and thinking creatively. 58% of AI users said they were producing work they couldn't have produced a year earlier.

That changes the productivity conversation.

The goal isn't simply to help employees complete existing tasks faster. AI can expand the range of work employees are capable of doing.

For business leaders, that creates an opportunity to rethink enterprise productivity, but also raises a challenge: Are the organization's technology environment and workflows ready to support the way employees are beginning to work?

How can AI PCs improve business performance?

AI adoption is growing, but many organizations are struggling to turn access to AI into consistent business outcomes.

IBM's 2026 CEO study found that only 25% of the workforce regularly uses AI as part of their job, even though 86% of CEOs believe their employees have the skills to collaborate with AI. IBM's Mohamad Ali, Senior Vice President of IBM Consulting, explains the challenge:

“The CEOs delivering real results from AI transformation aren’t just deploying AI faster, they’re redesigning their organizations to bring together the best people with the best technology.”

This is where the AI PC becomes part of a larger business strategy.

Organizations need to think about more than AI applications. They need an endpoint environment capable of supporting AI-enabled work across a distributed workforce, without compromising security, manageability, or user experience.

Workplace productivity

Employees increasingly expect technology to help them work intelligently wherever they are.

AI PCs can support AI-enabled applications while dedicated AI acceleration helps handle supported workloads directly on the device.

Intel® Core™ Ultra Series 3 is the first AI PC platform built on Intel 18A process technology. Intel says the platform powers more than 200 PC designs, bringing together performance, graphics, battery life, and AI capabilities across a broad range of systems.

For organizations, that creates more options when designing an AI-Ready device strategy around different employee roles and workloads.

Smarter security

AI creates new opportunities, but it also introduces new considerations around data, privacy, and security.

Processing certain AI workloads locally can reduce dependence on cloud processing for those workloads. At the same time, enterprise AI PCs can combine AI capabilities with hardware-based security and device management features.

Intel® Core™ Ultra Series 3 with Intel vPro is designed for commercial environments, combining AI capabilities with security and manageability. Intel says its commercial portfolio now powers more than 125 designs across enterprise, education, government, and SMB environments.

For IT leaders, this matters because an AI PC strategy cannot be separated from the organization's broader endpoint security strategy.

Better collaboration for hybrid work

The modern workforce isn't tied to one location.

Employees work from offices, homes, client sites, airports, and other locations. AI-enabled PC features can enhance video calls through capabilities such as background blur, noise suppression, lighting enhancement, and intelligent framing.

That can create a more consistent collaboration experience for distributed teams while helping employees remain productive wherever work takes place.

And collaboration itself is evolving.

Microsoft's 2026 Work Trend Index describes a shift from AI simply assisting employees toward AI taking on more execution. Its research found that 66% of AI users say AI allows them to spend more time on high-value work, while 58% say they are producing work they couldn't have produced a year ago.

Microsoft's research also highlights an important leadership challenge: the constraint is increasingly how work is structured around AI, rather than simply what AI can do.

For organizations pursuing the future of work, the device, applications, workflows, and management model therefore need to evolve together.

What should IT leaders consider before an AI PC refresh?

An AI PC refresh shouldn't start with a processor specification sheet.

It should start with the business problem.

1. Which employees actually need AI PCs?

Not every employee has the same workload.

Content creators, data-intensive users, mobile professionals, executives, developers, analysts, and employees using AI-enabled productivity applications may have different requirements.

A role-based approach can help organizations align device capabilities with actual business needs instead of deploying identical hardware across the entire workforce.

2. Which workloads should run locally?

AI PCs create opportunities to process supported AI workloads directly on the device.

IT leaders should consider which workloads benefit from local processing based on performance, responsiveness, privacy, connectivity, and cost requirements.

3. How will AI PCs fit into the existing endpoint environment?

Adding a new generation of devices shouldn't create another management layer.

Organizations need to consider enrollment, configuration, application deployment, patching, security policies, compliance, monitoring, and remote support before scaling an AI PC fleet.

4. How will the organization measure business impact?

The success of an AI PC strategy shouldn't be measured only by device performance.

Leaders should look at metrics such as employee productivity, application performance, device reliability, support requirements, security posture, battery performance, and user experience.

AI investment is increasingly coming under scrutiny for measurable outcomes. Gartner notes that enterprise AI spending is shifting toward providers that can demonstrate value through cost, latency, performance, and reliability.

The same principle should apply to the endpoint.

How can organizations manage an AI-ready device fleet?

An AI PC can provide employees with more capable technology. But deploying hundreds or thousands of AI PCs across an organization introduces another challenge: how do IT teams manage all those devices without increasing operational complexity?

That's where Zones Modern Device Management can support the transition.

Zones helps organizations manage devices across distributed and hybrid environments, with services covering MDM setup and configuration, device and patch management, application management, compliance management, and remote assistance.

For organizations adopting AI PCs, this can help address some of the practical challenges that come after the purchase:

Deployment: Configure and enroll devices consistently across locations and users.
Security: Maintain policies and compliance requirements across distributed endpoints.
Patching: Keep operating systems and applications current without relying entirely on users.
Application management: Deploy and manage the applications employees need for their roles.
Visibility: Monitor the device environment and identify issues before they become larger operational problems.
Remote support: Assist employees regardless of where they work.

The result is a more connected approach to endpoint modernization: the device provides the capability, while modern device management provides the operational foundation needed to support it at scale.

Build an AI-ready endpoint strategy with Intel and Zones

The AI PC represents more than another generation of computing hardware.

It reflects a broader shift in how employees work and how organizations need to think about their technology environments.

Intel Core Ultra Series 3 brings together AI acceleration, Intel Arc Graphics, next-generation performance, power efficiency, and enterprise capabilities designed for the evolving workplace.

But the value of an AI PC doesn't come from the processor alone.

Organizations need to connect AI Productivity with endpoint security, device lifecycle management, employee experience, and the realities of Hybrid Work. They need a strategy that prepares employees for increasingly AI-enabled applications without creating unnecessary complexity for IT.

For IT and business leaders, that is the bigger AI PC opportunity.

Build the right devices. Create the right environment. Manage them at scale. And give employees the technology they need to work differently.