CIOs are investing in AI-powered transformation, but it’s crucial that they provide devices with the processing power to support AI for years to come.
The role of hardware in the race for AI-driven enterprise growth
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CIOs and IT decision- see AI as a transformative force and are investing in the infrastructure, governance, security, software, and services to drive AI capabilities throughout their organizations.
Yet to truly embrace the spirit of AI innovation, IT leaders must also ensure their teams have PC hardware capable of adapting to the new era.
Foundry’s 2025 State of the CIO Report reveals how much AI is fueling technology spend.
Asked which technology initiatives will drive the most IT investment in their business, 42% of IT decision-makers point to machine learning and AI, putting it ahead of other key priorities such as security (34%).1
Meanwhile, Foundry’s 2025 AI Priorities Study found 95% of the IT leaders surveyed are committed to accelerating their organization’s use of AI, with 61% anticipating that generative AI (genAI) would significantly improve product development and design, while 56% agreed that using genAI-infused products created better business outcomes.2
At the same time, the way enterprises use AI is evolving. Nearly all current genAI usage is through local applications or software-as-a-service applications connecting to large language models (LLMs) running in the cloud.
Yet there’s potential for a new breed of AI PCs to change that, shifting AI to a hybrid model, where some capabilities continue to operate that way, while others run locally on AI hardware built into the PC itself.
As Tom Mainelli, group vice president at IDC told CIO recently “the vision around AI PCs is that, over time, more of the models, starting with small language models and then quantized large language models…. more of those workloads will happen locally, faster, with lower latency, and you won’t need to be connected to the internet.”3
Personalized
Why is running AI locally desirable?
Why is running AI locally desirable? Partly because AI can make the personal computer even more personal, driving an employee experience where applications and the operating system itself keep track of usage patterns and adapt to individual preferences.
With Microsoft’s Copilot technology now integrated into the OS, Windows 11 is evolving to drive deeper personalization, with new Copilot+ PCs leading the way.
In time, by learning how employees work and spotting repeated tasks and workloads, the AI PC will be able to make useful suggestions, highlight relevant tools, and even suggest automating mundane and repetitive tasks.
AI services and agents that run persistently on the device will have access to previous interactions and user history for context, expanding their capabilities to inform decision- making and provide predictive support.
Not all these features are available right now. Microsoft’s Copilot+ initiative is accelerating the adoption of AI hardware, but many software vendors are still developing features to exploit it.
But by investing in AI hardware now, enterprises can ensure that they have the right device platform in place to use AI features as they emerge.
This is more critical right now as businesses refresh PC fleets in preparation for the end of Windows 10 support and look to make full use of the evolving capabilities of Windows 11.
IDC’s Analyst Brief advises that “these PCs will be in your installed base for a long time.” It adds: “You don’t want to handcuff your employees to systems that don’t offer the basic building blocks necessary for AI functionality down the road.”7
New Lenovo ThinkPad PCs enhanced by AMD Ryzen™ AI Pro 300 Series processors provide those basic building blocks and more.
AMD’s architecture delivers the multicore CPU performance to run mainstream applications at enterprise pace, using energy-efficient 4nm processor technology that radically improves battery life.
What’s more, they offer an ideal balance between CPU, graphics processing unit (GPU) and neural processing unit (NPU) performance to power through cutting-edge, AI-enhanced applications. The integrated NPU delivers 50 TOPS (trillions of a-operations per second) of AI processing power to run LLMs or image and audio-processing models at speed, and with a lower impact on battery life.
Meanwhile, the onboard AMD Radeon 840M or 860M GPUs deliver more AI performance where it’s needed, accelerating the most intensive tasks.
High performance vehicles for AI transformation
It’s like having a digital assistant who gets smarter every day and never sleeps, and because it all happens locally, it’s fast, secure and tailored to you.4
Steve Long, senior VP of Lenovo’s Intelligent Device group.
You don’t want to handcuff your employees to systems that don’t offer the basic building blocks necessary for AI functionality down the road
Source: IDC, IDC Analyst Brief, Sponsored by AMD, Planning for the future: The importance of equipping your workforce with AI PCs
1
Copilot+ PCs also offer higher levels of protection, delivering enhanced, proactive security to safeguard against malware, ransomware, and phishing threats without compromising device performance.
By harnessing local AI processing power, threat detection tools can operate without the latency that comes with operating from the cloud.
Lenovo’s ThinkShield technology harnesses AI to protect Windows 11 PCs below the operating system level, detecting BIOS-level attacks and enabling firmware to self-heal should a compromise be detected.
ThinkShield also reduces cloud costs by harnessing the power of on-device AI. Anti-phishing solutions such as Bufferzone Safe Workspace use the hardware in AI PCs to identify phishing attacks on-device with minimal latency and without the risks of exposing sensitive data through the cloud.
2
Protected
As a recent IDC Analyst Brief on AI PCs says: “Today, cloud-based AI services can be quite expensive on a per-seat basis. By deploying an AI PC to accomplish tasks locally, the company should save money over time.”5
Indeed, there’s an argument that local AI processing can also drive sustainability by reducing AI’s burden on power-hungry data centers and performing tasks at the edge, on the device. IDC’s Analyst Brief describes this as “a responsible way to scale AI.”6
Most importantly, Copilot+ PCs drive productivity, delivering the all-around performance to accelerate workflows in mainstream business and creative apps.
Already, applications including Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, and Premiere Pro; Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve; and Skylum Luminar Neo are using local graphics and AI hardware to radically enhance performance in computationally intensive tasks.
Productive
3
Endpoint security tools like CrowdStrike can run local AI models to improve detection speeds, providing a more energy-efficient way to detect malware and advanced persistent threats.
Processing data on-device brings other security and privacy advantages. Tools such as LMStudio and Ollama make it possible to run LLMs on local hardware, so that businesses can build ChatGPT-like experiences that run on the device rather than through the cloud.
This means sensitive data isn’t being uploaded to public services thus creating business risk. It could also make the genAI experience more responsive and cost-efficient for users.
This enables them to perform these tasks faster, saving hours of employee time and reducing the impact on battery life. As time goes on, more productivity applications will follow the same path, particularly for operations where AI is involved. The results could be significant time savings for every employee.
The same hardware is also improving collaboration by using local AI processing to enhance audio and video during video calls and meetings, screening out unwanted sounds, boosting speech, and blurring or replacing backgrounds as well as optimizing framing, focus, and exposure.
On non-AI PCs, this kind of intensive, latency-sensitive processing creates a burden for the central processing unit (CPU). Onboard AI hardware handles these workloads more efficiently.
By splitting AI operations between the CPU, GPU, and NPU, the processor can maintain a much more even workload, without the spikes in power and cooling that drain the battery at a faster pace.
Lenovo’s new ThinkPad T-Series and X-Series laptops are the ideal vehicle for AMD’s processor technology —and the AI tools and applications coming down the line.
As more AI applications make the shift from the cloud to running locally on the device and as more advanced LLMs and algorithms emerge, Lenovo ThinkPads based on AMD Ryzen™ AI Pro 300 Series processors will deliver the secure, performant platform enterprises need.
Foundry, State of the CIO Survey 2025, Foundry, February 5, 2025, https://foundryco.com/research/state-of-the-cio/
Foundry, AI Priorities Study 2025, February 25, 2025, https://foundryco.com/tools-for-marketers/research-ai-priorities/
Rooney P, Will the end of Windows 10 accelerate CIO interest in AI PCs?, CIO.com, February 6, 2025, https://www.cio.com/article/3812887/will-the-end-of-windows-10-accelerate-cio-interest-in-ai-pcs.html
Patrizo A, Should you buy AI PCs for your workforce in 2025?, Computerworld, April 8, 2025, https://www.computerworld.com/article/3854726/should-you-buy-ai-pcs-for-your-workforce-in-2025.html
IDC, IDC Analyst Brief, Sponsored by AMD, Planning for the future: The importance of equipping your workforce with AI PCs, December 2024, #US52736624 https://www.amd.com/content/dam/amd/en/documents/products/processors/business-systems/idc-ai-pc-analyst-brief.pdf
Ibid
Ibid
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
agree that using genAI-infused products created better business outcomes
Source: Foundry’s 2025 AI Priorities Study
56%
anticipate that generative AI (genAI) would significantly improve product development and design
Source: Foundry’s 2025 AI Priorities Study
61%
of the IT leaders surveyed are committed to accelerating their organization’s use of AI
Source: Foundry’s 2025 AI Priorities Study
95%
42%
of IT decision makers point to machine learning and AI as the main technology initiative driving IT investment - ahead of other key priorities
Source: Foundry’s 2025 State of the CIO Report
Lenovo puts AI at the heart of personalized, productive, and protected experiences
For more detail on these new devices, read the eBook now
Lenovo, AMD redefine mobile productivity with AI-powered ThinkPad
In this episode of DEMO, Keith Shaw is joined by Brent Lamm, Senior Worldwide Product Manager at Lenovo, to unveil the ThinkPad X13 Gen 6—a compact powerhouse built for the AI-powered hybrid workforce. Featuring the AMD Ryzen AI PRO 300 Series processor, this is Lenovo’s lightest ThinkPad ever, weighing in at just over 2 pounds and built to mil-spec durability standards.
For more detail on these new devices, read the eBook now
