In the competitive world of chips, household names like Intel, Nvidia, AMD, and Qualcomm have dominated the market. However, a lesser-known player, MediaTek, is poised to make a significant impact by 2025. According to Reuters, the Taiwanese chip company is gearing up to launch an AI PC chipset specifically designed for Windows PCs in late 2025. This move comes as MediaTek aims to compete with Qualcomm’s popular Snapdragon X Elite, which has been making waves as a potential rival to the MacBook Air.
Reuters reports that MediaTek’s new chip will target the same Microsoft Copilot Plus PC program that Qualcomm has been involved in with Microsoft. With Microsoft’s exclusivity arrangement with Qualcomm for Arm-based versions of Windows coming to an end this year, there is now an opportunity for chipmakers like MediaTek to step in and make their mark.
Apart from MediaTek, other players like Nvidia and AMD are also capitalizing on the expired Qualcomm deal by planning to introduce Arm PC chips in 2025. Interestingly, there are reports suggesting that Nvidia’s chip may have some involvement from MediaTek. Taiwan’s United Daily News previously reported this, and Reuters has now confirmed MediaTek’s collaboration on this separate chip. Furthermore, there are rumors circulating about a potential collaboration between MediaTek and Nvidia on a gaming chip of similar size to the Steam Deck.
Despite Nvidia’s ability to build its own Arm chips, it seems that the collaboration with MediaTek may serve a specific purpose. While Nvidia has experience with its own Arm-based chips, MediaTek, as a fabless chipmaker, specializes in adopting ready-made designs from Arm. This suggests that MediaTek’s involvement may revolve around utilizing Arm’s existing processing cores rather than developing its own from scratch.
Interestingly, these ready-made designs could potentially power another competitor for Qualcomm in the Windows+Arm market. According to Reuters, Arm executives have mentioned that one of their customers utilized these components to create a chip within a short timeframe, leveraging a design that is already complete—something MediaTek’s chip may not have achieved yet.
It appears that the competition in the laptop space is intensifying once again, with new developments and collaborations on the horizon.