Austin, Texas, USA, June 25, 2025
Futurum Highlights How New Desktop-Sized AI Supercomputers Address Three of the Most Critical Asks of IT Decision-Makers: Security, Model Training, and ROI
The expansion of AI tools ecosystem from being primarily Cloud-based to an increasingly hybrid in nature – incorporating data centers, on-prem servers, AI PCs and other intelligent , AI-enabled edge devices – has continued to drive investment in edge solutions like Edge servers and AI PCs. For the better part of the last 12 months, consumer and commercial grade AI PCs have been the focus of this expansion of AI to the edge. These PCs, many of which fall into the Microsoft Copilot+ category, but most of which feature modest AI capabilities, have been primarily aimed at bringing AI assistant and agentic workloads on-device. In other words, they are not systems designed to build, train, or fine-tune large AI models. They are essentially AI-enabled consumer and professional PCs designed for enhanced productivity and the consumption of AI-accelerated solutions and experiences.
As of Q1 2025, however, a new and more powerful type of of AI PC has been making its way to the market: These new high-performance AI PCs pack a lot more compute and AI acceleration power, and are designed to enable developers and software engineers to build, train, test and fine-tune AI models locally, securely, and more cost-effectively. While they cannot entirely replace the bandwidth and scalability of cloud services, they can help organizations reduce their reliance on data center resources in the pre-launch stages of an AI model, and even run AI models securely and locally as needed.
Figure 1: IT Decision Makers on Which AI PC Features They Are Most Excited About
Olivier Blanchard, Edge Semiconductors and AI Devices Practice Lead at Futurum, explains that, “for a lot of organizations, especially in industries where AI models have to be trained on extremely sensitive data, the ability to do so locally and securely, inside of the firewall, is critical. These extremely powerful desktop and deskside AI PCs, which are essentially AI developer stations, solve that problem for them. Financial institutions, healthcare, medical research, aerospace and defense industries are likely to be especially enthusiastic about these new devices and their capabilities.”
Futurum’s latest Enterprise IT Decision-Maker Insights study highlighted the importance of security in organizations’ data and solutions ecosystems. When asked about which features they were most excited by with AI PCs, the #1 answer was Security, with 70.9% of respondents noting that they were very excited. (See Figure 1.) Enthusiasm for the security advantages of AI PCs outperformed more obvious responses like Productivity (66.8%), Futureproofing for AI (63.7%), and even Compute Performance (61.6%). As organizations race to build, test, fine-tune, and launch AI solutions trained on proprietary and often sensitive data, having the ability to move these workflows from the data center to PCs solves a critical problem for them.
Additionally, 59.9% of enterprise ITDMs who participated in the study also highlighted their high level of excitement for the ability to train large models on AI PCs – a capability that has been generally out of the reach of most Copilot+ class AI PCs. These new high-performance AI PCs address this need, filling a feature gap that more mainstream AI PCs were not equipped to fill. (See Figure 1.)
The same study also highlighted the uncertainty around articulating the ROI of investing in AI PCs. And while mainstream AI PCs still struggle to deliver on the promise of quantifiable productivity gains attributable to on-device agentic solutions, high-performance AI PCs have a much more immediate and clear ROI story to tell. This is a critical advantage, as 39.9% of enterprise IT decision-makers surveyed noted that calculating, validating or articulating the ROI of AI PCs remains a major pain point (with an additional 32% listing this as a minor but persistent pain point). In other words, with nearly 72% of IT decision-makers highlighting ROI as a challenging calculation to justify AI PC spend, any AI PC category that can articulate a clear and measurable return on investment is bound to have an easier time justifying its value quickly. (See Figure 2.)
Figure 2: IT Decision Makers on Their Biggest Pain Points with AI PCs
“There are also distinct ROI advantages to incorporating these devices into an organization’s overall AI ecosystem, separate from the security aspects of their value proposition,” adds Blanchard. “AI model training in the cloud can be an expensive endeavor. If an organization can move model development, training, testing, and fine-tuning workloads to a local device, that can radically change the cost per token equation.” Blanchard continues: “And for critical projects with tight timelines, the ability to move these pre-launch workloads to a high-performance AI PC (or several networked high-performance AI PCs) eliminates inefficiencies like having to deal with limited compute bandwidth on shared resources, or needing to move massive amounts of data across congested network connections to and from the cloud. In short, it makes operational sense to complement model development and training in the cloud with local devices capable of doing the job both independently and more cost-effectively. These PCs unlock that option, and help make the ROI equation of investing in them a lot simpler to calculate.”
Read more about the four categories of high-performance AI PCs currently available, and how their unique configurations address the specific needs of highly-specialized AI PC users, High Performance AI PCs Are Here to Do What Data Centers Can’t, and dive deeper into Futurum’s AI PC IT Decision-Maker Study, 1H 2025 AI Devices Decision Maker Survey Report.
About Futurum Intelligence for Market Leaders
Futurum Intelligence’s Intelligent Devices IQ service provides actionable insight from analysts, reports, and interactive visualization datasets, helping leaders drive their organizations through transformation and business growth. Subscribers can log into the platform at https://app.futurumgroup.com/, and non-subscribers can find additional information at Futurum Intelligence.
Follow news and updates from Futurum on X and LinkedIn using #Futurum. Visit the Futurum Newsroom for more information and insights.
Other Insights from Futurum:
Dell’s Innovative Approach with AI PCs – Six Five On The Road
AI PCs: The Ultimate Enterprise Edge Device – Six Five On The Road at Dell Tech World 2025
Futurum Study: 62% of AI PC Adoption Supports Efforts To Futureproof Organizations For AI
Author Information
Olivier Blanchard is Research Director, Intelligent Devices. He covers edge semiconductors and intelligent AI-capable devices for Futurum. In addition to having co-authored several books about digital transformation and AI with Futurum Group CEO Daniel Newman, Blanchard brings considerable experience demystifying new and emerging technologies, advising clients on how best to future-proof their organizations, and helping maximize the positive impacts of technology disruption while mitigating their potentially negative effects. Follow his extended analysis on X and LinkedIn.
