Dell Technologies World 2025 | Grant Duke & Lisa Schaub, Microsoft

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Grant Duke

Director Windows Business Development WW, Dell Technologies

Microsoft

Lisa Schaub

US Windows Partner Business Manager

Microsoft

play_circle_outline Importance of AI and velocity in innovation highlighted.

play_circle_outline Discussion on NPU in optimizing machine performance and increasing battery life.

play_circle_outline Revolutionizing Youth Sports Coaching and Home Remodeling with AI: Copilot's Impact on Personal and Organizational Efficiency

play_circle_outline Paving the Way for Business Transformation Through AI: Hopes for Future Technology Advancements

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Grant Duke & Lisa Schaub, Microsoft

Grant Duke

Director Windows Business Development WW, Dell Technologies Microsoft

Lisa Schaub

US Windows Partner Business Manager Microsoft

Grant Duke, director of Windows commercial business development for Dell Technologies at Microsoft Corp., and Lisa Schaub, U.S. Dell channel executive at Microsoft, join theCUBE’s Savannah Peterson and Dave Vellante at Dell Technologies World 2025 to spotlight the latest milestones in Microsoft’s long-standing partnership with Dell. The discussion highlights how AI and next-gen hardware innovation are reshaping user experiences across devices.

Schaub and Duke explore the integration of neural processing units into Windows 11, boosting battery life and ... Read more

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What is different about the transition to Windows 11 compared to previous versions of Windows? add

What is the fundamental shift brought about by the introduction of the NPU in terms of performance per watt ratio, offloading processes from the CPU, and increasing battery life? add

What key things have firms who emerged as Frontier Firms after injecting AI into every aspect of their business learned, according to the Work Trend Index report published last month? add

What will be the theme for next year in regards to AI and productivity in businesses, according to Grant? add

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Grant Duke & Lisa Schaub, Microsoft

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Savannah Peterson

>> Good morning, AI fam, and welcome back to Las Vegas, Nevada. We're here at Dell Tech World. Day three of our live broadcast here on theCUBE. My name's Savannah Peterson, here with Dave Vellante, bringing you to the best and brightest. Dave, I feel smarter after this week.

Dave Vellante

>> I feel just smarter just hanging around with you, so I got news for you.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, you flatter me.

Dave Vellante

>> That's true.

Savannah Peterson

>> Now, that was a very nice thing to say. I appreciate that. And speaking of feeling smarter, our next two guests are going to be absolutely fantastic. Lisa and Grant, thank you so much for coming to join us this morning.

Grant Duke

>> Thanks for having us, Savannah.

Lisa Schaub

>> You're welcome, yes.

Grant Duke

>> Appreciate it, Dave.

Dave Vellante

>> You bet.

Savannah Peterson

>> I am so thrilled about this conversation because we are talking about this little gem in front of me, all the exciting things happening. 35-year partnership between Microsoft and Dell, so impressive. I can just feel your energy right now. What about this moment is so exciting? This must be the intersection of a lot of innovation for all of your careers. Lisa, I'm going to start with you.

Lisa Schaub

>> Everything's so exciting. It's moving so fast that we can't even keep up with it.

Savannah Peterson

>> Right? The velocity is nuts.

Lisa Schaub

>> The velocity is super fast.

Savannah Peterson

>> Absolutely nuts.

Lisa Schaub

>> And I feel smarter this week too.

Savannah Peterson

>> Love that. We all won!

Lisa Schaub

>> We all won. But it's all about the journey. And whether you're starting with this or you're not starting, you're on a regular Windows 11 PC, AI PC with Dell, it's time to get on board, right? Because we're going to talk about some amazing experiences. Grant's going to pull in some NPU experiences, but I don't know, what would you add to that?

Grant Duke

>> Well, I think what's different at this point in time, that over the history of Windows as customers have adopted the new operating system, there's this very heavy shift that's expensive to move forward, and then IT sort of steps back and says, "Oh, we finished the project."

Savannah Peterson

>> It's a good point.

Grant Duke

>> What's different this time is it's not just moving from 10 to 11; it's simultaneously adopting AI and setting your trajectory forward. And that's my 13 years at Microsoft. We've moved off of XP, we've moved off of 7, we've moved off of 8.

Savannah Peterson

>> So much has changed in those 13 years. My goodness.

Lisa Schaub

>> So much.

Grant Duke

>> Now we're looking at, wow, it's not this cycle where we take a step back. It's how do we lay the platform to go faster?

Savannah Peterson

>> Right. And I mean, as we're talking about this velocity, none of us have ever moved this fast in our careers with everything that's going on.

Lisa Schaub

>> No.

Grant Duke

>> No.

Savannah Peterson

>> And what's so cool is these devices, these edge devices right here in front of us are what's going to support that. And I love it because we get to test a lot of devices, and as analysts, we're a little hard on them because it takes a bit to impress folks like Dave and I, quite frankly. And like we were talking about, I mean, from the battery life to the compute in these machines, it is so different. So talk to me a little bit about the architecture in here and why this is such an optimized machine. Grant, I'll start with you this time.

Grant Duke

>> Sure. The fundamental shift is the introduction of the NPU. So we all know CPUs, series processing. GPUs brought us the parallel processing. What the NPU brings us is performance per watt, and that ratio is what fundamentally changes. And so by offloading processes off the CPU onto the NPU, A, it frees up your CPU for more activity, but that's what delivers then this increased battery life where you're not just going a full day, but into day two. And in your case week-

Savannah Peterson

>> This is half the week....

Grant Duke

>> it sounds like three days, yes.

Savannah Peterson

>> Literally half the week, on the news, that's doing everything. And I just had to plug it in for the first time since I left California on Sunday.

Grant Duke

>> Yes.

Lisa Schaub

>> It's amazing.

Savannah Peterson

>> It's Wednesday. That's nuts.

Grant Duke

>> And it's such a great example of where we're trying to do with AI, we're trying to solve for everything right now. No, let's start with simple things. What's the experience for every employee in your company of having this type of experience just with step one, and that ability to load some AI capabilities onto that NPU? And you're excited about this and we're just getting going.

Savannah Peterson

>> I know, I know!

Dave Vellante

>> And that is the thing. I mean, we're so excited about the battery power or the battery life, but then when you think about how software exploitation is going to take hold, I remember when Tesla decided to build its own silicon and then take advantage of the NPU.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, yeah.

Dave Vellante

>> Now, whether or not you believe that Waymo with LiDAR or Tesla with cameras-

Savannah Peterson

>> That's another conversation, but yeah....

Dave Vellante

>> but it was so interesting that the NPU was the linchpin of that exploitation-

Savannah Peterson

>> NPU is a big deal. It's a big deal....

Dave Vellante

>> to lower camera costs and whatever because the neural processing unit. So I'm really curious as to how you guys think about ISVs taking advantage of the NPU and what's coming.

Grant Duke

>> That is the next step. So if you think of this category of devices with Copilot+, so you have the exclusive Windows features that we'll continue to invest in, but really it's the ISV piece is the next piece. So one example is just think of Microsoft as an ISV. So the ability to summarize Outlook email conversations and things in Word.

Lisa Schaub

>> We were just talking about that.

Savannah Peterson

>> We were just talking about this before we went live, yeah.

Grant Duke

>> Oh, good.

Dave Vellante

>> Right, right, right.

Lisa Schaub

>> Summarize, amazing.

Grant Duke

>> So that piece there, and we expect I think the security agents and those companies will be phase one of bringing your security stack and moving it off the CPU for performance onto the NPU.

Savannah Peterson

>> Which makes a huge difference.

Grant Duke

>> A huge difference.

Savannah Peterson

>> This is an insane power suck when it comes to compute.

Grant Duke

>> Correct. I mean, I've met with CIOs around the world who are almost proud that they take a brand-new Dell device or other PC that's advertised 12 hours of battery and they're proud they can crank it down to three because of their security stack on their devices.

Savannah Peterson

>> That's such a security nerd thing. Oh my gosh.

Grant Duke

>> Yeah, they knew. But when you change that perspective, then it frees up now to innovate in your business. And so your line of business applications that you've had because everyone's been using Windows and trusted for decades, you're not re-platforming those apps. You're injecting those with AI, with small language models down at the edge, and doing that here. It's all this journey. It all starts with the platform here and it makes Windows exciting again. Satya said this for years, "We need to take Windows people from needing Windows to liking Windows to loving Windows."

Savannah Peterson

>> To loving.

Grant Duke

>> This is what this is all about.

Savannah Peterson

>> I love that sentence. I hadn't even thought about that, but I feel like we've been joking nerds are having a moment right now.

Grant Duke

>> They are.

Savannah Peterson

>> And I know, which is great. I feel like my mother's never been more proud of me being a nerd than in this particular technological revolution. But I think you're bringing up such a good point though is we're starting to talk about the software again. We're starting to play with things, I'm talking about Copilot designing my nails all freaking week this week, and it's so fun to be able to share how these tools are empowering and inspiring us. So I'm curious, in your conversations, you probably get to see all the cool stuff on the front lines, what are some of the use cases or the examples of how people are optimizing themselves, quite frankly, because that's what these machines do for us, that you've been hearing right out the gate? Lisa, I'll start with you.

Lisa Schaub

>> Well, just even accessibility, right?

Savannah Peterson

>> Yes.

Lisa Schaub

>> It's a core priority for us. Everything that we do is injected with accessibility so within Windows 11. So you just do it, you could do it right now. You hit the Windows button and the U key, and it'll pop up all the accessibility features that are in Windows 11, and I just dare you to play around with them because they're amazing. Mac-

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh my gosh.

Lisa Schaub

>> I know, I know!

Savannah Peterson

>> I'm looking at it right now.

Dave Vellante

>> Very cool. Text size, visual effects, mouse and pointer touch.

Lisa Schaub

>> Exactly.

Dave Vellante

>> There's like dozens of them. Hearing, interaction speech, keyboard eye control.

Lisa Schaub

>> It hits all-

Savannah Peterson

>> I'm so glad you just told me this. I cover our accessibility beat and it-

Dave Vellante

>> Tip of the day....

Savannah Peterson

>> it really matters.

Lisa Schaub

>> Tip of the day.

Savannah Peterson

>> Tip of the day.

Lisa Schaub

>> Yeah. So, even-

Savannah Peterson

>> Wow. I'm going to talk about this a lot. This is grea.t

Lisa Schaub

>> Yeah, so natural language, being able to tell your computer what to do with the voice command, natural language is just so tremendous and we love that. I mean, that's just embedded in everything that we do. It's such an honor, right?

Savannah Peterson

>> Right. Absolutely.

Lisa Schaub

>> It changes lives.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, it does change lives. And the fact that it's NLP, natural language processing, that in itself means that people aren't having to learn a new skill to be able to optimize these tools. We just get to be ourselves and the machine's going to be there to back us up.

Lisa Schaub

>> I joke around. I say, "I speak Texan," and so my computer understands me.

Savannah Peterson

>> That's adorable.

Lisa Schaub

>> That's good. Right?

Savannah Peterson

>> So does it say, "Y'all" back?

Lisa Schaub

>> Yeah, it does. Absolutely.

Dave Vellante

>> So I actually do remember the days when the experience of writing in a word processor was with a dedicated word processor.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, yeah.

Dave Vellante

>> Like, a Wang machine. And then if you wanted to do analytics, like stuff you do today in a spreadsheet, you would go to a mainframe terminal.

Grant Duke

>> Sure.

Dave Vellante

>> Okay. And then I also remember when we had a shared IBM PC, we had to sign up to use it-

Savannah Peterson

>> You're really flexing your specs right now.

Dave Vellante

>> Yeah, I'm going back. Okay, but the reason I bring that up is because what transpired was one of the most exciting times in our industry with the original Windows and Intel PC. It just exploded our personal productivity, and now we're seeing Copilot. So I'm curious as to how you're seeing and what you project for Copilots's affecting all of our personal productivities now that we have all these tools and we're expert at them. What are you seeing so far, early learnings, and where can it go?

Grant Duke

>> Sure. The best way to learn some more about this is last month we published our Work Trend Index report. It's an annual report where we surveyed 31,000 users of Windows around the world. About 3% of those respondents this year emerged in what we're calling the Frontier Firm. These are firms that have injected AI into every aspect of their business, and they've learned three key things along the way that we expect most firms to follow. That journey brings in first is firms are realizing that they have intelligence on tap, just the same way you might get a Budweiser or a Guinness.

Savannah Peterson

>> I know. I was like, "You're making me a little thirsty." It was a big night last night.

Grant Duke

>> But it's available at everybody's fingertips. And whether it's just things of having semantic search, and that making me individually more productive. That's the idea in the naming on Copilot. It's there to be your companion, help you get through the drudgery of work. But then it migrates into this concept of agentic, and I know we've heard that term a lot this week, but bring in the capabilities where an agent will become, think of it like a digital employee, a resource in your environment, that whether they join a meeting, take notes, assign action items, that's a simple example, but resources that spin up to help you manage a project, keep your team on task, but then a shared resource where that agent can be used by multiple teams and the learnings from one project can translate to another. We don't lose that IP within the silos of our own company. It's shared across divisions. And then that resource becoming and upending the org chart where you literally will design projects and resources with digital assets and employees and the employees themselves. We're on a journey of acceleration that's really, really inspiring and exciting.

Dave Vellante

>> Agents with tribal knowledge, yeah.

Savannah Peterson

>> I know. I mean, you always talk about institutional knowledge, legacy knowledge within an organization. Imagine having that at the fingertips of every single employee day one when they started at a company.

Grant Duke

>> Absolutely.

Lisa Schaub

>> Right. I don't have to go, "Grant, can you tell me this? Can you tell me that? Where do I find that?"

Savannah Peterson

>> Well, you don't have to take that learning curve. You think about those first 90 days and you're just figuring it out at that point, and to be able to walk in-

Lisa Schaub

>> Exactly....

Savannah Peterson

>> ask the silly questions, or at least in your brain, you know?

Grant Duke

>> Yeah.

Lisa Schaub

>> Yeah.

Savannah Peterson

>> And then be able to have that immersive experience of the most senior human or that founder's voice or to be able to, "What would Michael Dell say about X, Y, or Z?" And it's trained on his speeches, for example. There's so much. I'm going to ask you a personal question because y'all are way too fun and I'm enjoying this a lot. So what do you hope in your... Putting on your weekend hat, so not just your day-job hat, what are you most excited about for your personal life that AI is going to unlock or enable or potentially solve? Grant, I'll start with you this time.

Grant Duke

>> So my personal life at home, I have a 12-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son.

Savannah Peterson

>> Aw.

Grant Duke

>> I've coached their soccer teams for years, and now I coach my daughter's football team. The State of Illinois sanctioned girls flag football as a varsity sport to prepare for the Olympics.

Savannah Peterson

>> First of all, let's go. Love that.

Grant Duke

>> Well, one of the things that I have to manage through the week in addition to my day job is what's the attendance going to be at practice? What's the roster in the lineup? If I could have an agent reach out to those parents who haven't RSVP'd yet for practice, just that hour on Friday morning that I don't have to-

Savannah Peterson

>> It was already sorted.

Grant Duke

>> It's already done. It's been figured out.

Savannah Peterson

>> If you just knew, you had the confidence, your daughter can feel good about it.

Grant Duke

>> It's those follow-ups and things like that. I can't wait for that to happen, and then design and say, "Hey, this is what the lineup should be in the roster based off of the performance of the team last week."

Savannah Peterson

>> What a great example.

Grant Duke

>> The casual coach for youth sports. It's going to be amazing.

Dave Vellante

>> Oh, wow.

Savannah Peterson

>> That is such a great example. Would you like to say hi to the kids?

Grant Duke

>> Hi, Lindsay. Hi, Clayton.

Savannah Peterson

>> I love that. What about you, Lisa?

Lisa Schaub

>> It'll find me a husband.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh!

Lisa Schaub

>> I'm kidding.

Savannah Peterson

>> Amen, queen. With you, with you.

Lisa Schaub

>> I was kidding. I don't know. Maybe? We don't know. We don't know. You know, I lean on him with imagination and the teams and I got you on that one, didn't I?

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, you did.

Dave Vellante

>> That was good. That was good. That is-

Savannah Peterson

>> As the token single person at theCUBE, you just really took a look .

Lisa Schaub

>> Yeah, I got you.

Dave Vellante

>> That was a CUBE first right there. That was beautiful.

Lisa Schaub

>> Thank you, thank you. I got you.

Savannah Peterson

>> That was great.

Dave Vellante

>> .

Savannah Peterson

>> Where you at, baby? Where you at, honey? Where are you?

Lisa Schaub

>> It can find him, yeah. We could put it together.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, yeah. Oh, we're going to be friends now. You're stuck with me, Lisa.

Lisa Schaub

>> Yeah, yeah. Okay. Make it happen.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah.

Lisa Schaub

>> No, I think right now I'm remodeling my parents' home right now and I'm asking Copilot questions all the time. I'm trying to navigate different areas of life that are unchartered for me. So just even he's getting fancy with locations and call-outs and stuff like that, but it's just helping me, in such a busy, distracted world, to be able to focus.

Savannah Peterson

>> Totally.

Lisa Schaub

>> And I just feel like that, I don't know, it's transforming for me.

Savannah Peterson

>> I really like what you just said there though, when you're navigating unchartered territory, and that could be anything, right?

Lisa Schaub

>> Right.

Savannah Peterson

>> That could be finding our future husbands, that could be many aspects of that, but it's kind of like this buddy. I love the branding of Copilot because I've actually always joked, "I'm looking for my co-pilot," but so it's very appropriate. It's just always been in here. I never knew. But I think that's just it is you can walk into new experiences or a remodel or caretaking or whatever that might be with a pal who's going to be there to go and solve all those little nitty-gritty questions or some of the embarrassing stuff that maybe you wouldn't want to say out loud.

Lisa Schaub

>> Right, you didn't want to ask. Absolutely.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, which I think makes a really big difference. What's up?

Dave Vellante

>> You said off camera... I just had a thought. You said off camera-

Savannah Peterson

>> I know, I saw it. I saw it.

Dave Vellante

>> It's day three, so what do we have?

Lisa Schaub

>> Day three, four, who's counting?

Savannah Peterson

>> I'm here for you, babe. I'm here with you.

Dave Vellante

>> You said off camera, Grant, it's like going from the cell phone, dumb phone to the smartphone example. And I just remembered, I remember at one point Microsoft, when smartphones were coming in, tried to do the Windows phone. It didn't work, decided to kill it. Somebody said the other day, it might've been Satya, "I wish we never killed Windows phone."

Grant Duke

>> Yes.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh!

Lisa Schaub

>> Me too.

Dave Vellante

>> And I was like... And I'm like, "Why?"

Lisa Schaub

>> It's interesting. I liked it.

Dave Vellante

>> "I don't get it. I don't get it." I get it now.

Savannah Peterson

>> Totally.

Dave Vellante

>> Because of all this new capability that you're bringing in, you put that on a phone, it's going to supercharge this.

Savannah Peterson

>> You just had a light-bulb moment. I see where you're... Yeah.

Dave Vellante

>> Yeah, it was this whole light-bulb moment. So maybe, maybe we'll see Windows phone coming back.

Grant Duke

>> Never say, "Never."

Lisa Schaub

>> Never say, "Never."

Dave Vellante

>> Never say, "Never."

Grant Duke

>> Not making any news here today-

Dave Vellante

>> No, I hear you....

Grant Duke

>> but never say, "Never."

Dave Vellante

>> Everything's changing-

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, I love this. I love this...

Dave Vellante

>> is this how we're going to interact with devices in the next 10 years?

Savannah Peterson

>> Well, you know what? We're going to be on the browser, baby.

Dave Vellante

>> Exactly.

Savannah Peterson

>> You know my whole perspective on it.

Dave Vellante

>> So that opens up a whole new opportunity for disruption-

Savannah Peterson

>> Yes, it does....

Dave Vellante

>> for a technology company that has resources and vision.

Grant Duke

>> Well, I think we're always going to have a computer in our pocket in some way, or maybe it's in our eyeglasses or whatever that may be.

Savannah Peterson

>> They're with us, yeah.

Grant Duke

>> It's the interface that will migrate and evolve.

Savannah Peterson

>> You're absolutely right, Grant.

Grant Duke

>> Where do I need to be face down in my screen? I mean, those of us with kids, I mean, you just want to take them out of their hands all the time because they just get consumed with it. But how do we, just the way Copilot's designed to take the drudgery out of that, how can we use AI to change the interface of mobile compute, and so that I can use natural language here this way and I'm interacting with you rather than that screen? And that human element, we all want that, to get back to that more to more within our day. I mean, the average person's distracted 200 times a day with notifications.

Lisa Schaub

>> Me either.

Savannah Peterson

>> Such a sad thought to think that we were-

Grant Duke

>> How do we focus in a much better... It's a sad stat.

Savannah Peterson

>> Honestly, it just made me a little sick in my belly.

Lisa Schaub

>> I know.

Grant Duke

>> A little bit.

Savannah Peterson

>> I'm like, "Oh, man." Well, but it's heartbreaking, right? Because one of the things I think that's ironic is everyone, the folks who aren't understanding or doomers, so to speak, are very, "AI's going to take my job, AI's going to do all this." AI might quite literally make us more human again because it's going to take care of all of that stuff, prioritize those notifications so we're not distracted. I only need to know a few things out of that push notification cycle. I think it's really interesting. All right. I've got one last question for you.

Grant Duke

>> Great.

Savannah Peterson

>> Because we are having way too much fun up here, and I could talk to y'all all day. This is great. But I'm curious, when we're hanging out at Dell Tech World 2026, what do you hope to be able to say this time next year that you can't yet say today? Lisa, I'll start with you.

Lisa Schaub

>> Well, I think about next year, my son's graduating from high school, so-

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, exciting!...

Lisa Schaub

>> next year, so that'll be different. But I think that this will be the standard.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, yeah.

Lisa Schaub

>> Copilot+ PCs will be the standard. It won't be the, "Should I get it? Am I questioning?" I think everybody will be on board in its simplest form.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, yeah. We'll have that market saturation.

Lisa Schaub

>> Absolutely, yeah.

Savannah Peterson

>> I think you're probably right about that. I love that. Good prediction. All right, Grant, what about you?

Grant Duke

>> And we talked a little bit about this earlier, but today we're just looking at how AI's supporting the individual and individual productivity. The theme here next year will be about how the enterprise down to the small business have fundamentally re-transformed business processes and the productivity that comes from it. And I think of it as the democratization of this technology. It's not just the largest enterprises and largest governments that can afford this. It's all of us. And it opens up this potential. The platform is Windows. What are you going to do with it? That's where just the open aspect of it... I led two sessions this week on the concept of PC. I'm really looking forward to where it will go next year and bringing these real things to life. It won't be the art of possible. It'll be looking back on what we've accomplished.

Savannah Peterson

>> Heck yes. Great.

Lisa Schaub

>> The art of accomplishment.

Savannah Peterson

>> I know. The art of accomplishment. Let's go.

Lisa Schaub

>> Art of accomplishment.

Savannah Peterson

>> I love that. Grant and Lisa, this has just been a freaking perfect way to start the day. Thank you both so much for bringing the energy-

Dave Vellante

>> Yeah. Thanks, guys.

Lisa Schaub

>> This was fun, yeah....

Savannah Peterson

>> and the joy. It was awesome.

Dave Vellante

>> Great having you on.

Lisa Schaub

>> Thank you for having us.

Savannah Peterson

>> And a joy to share it with you. Day three, we're going to get through it, Dave. We got this.

Dave Vellante

>> Oh, yeah.

Savannah Peterson

>> We're going to have all the light-bulb moments today. Hopefully my voice gets through it. We'll see. We're out on the edge here, folks. Hope you're having as much fun as we are here in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada at Dell Tech World. My name's Savannah Peterson. You're watching theCUBE, the leading source for enterprise tech news.