AMD Launches Ryzen AI Halo to Challenge Nvidia DGX Spark
AMD has officially priced its Ryzen AI Halo mini-PC at $3,999, positioning it directly against Nvidia’s DGX Spark in the growing market for local AI development machines. The system will open for pre-orders in June, targeting developers, researchers, and students who prefer running AI workloads locally instead of relying on cloud services.
At the core of the system sits AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ 395 APU, which combines 16 Zen 5 CPU cores with 40 RDNA 3.5 GPU compute units delivering up to 60 teraflops of graphics performance. Additionally, the device includes 128GB of unified LPDDR5X memory, with up to 96GB available for GPU allocation to support large language model workloads. Earlier this year, AMD CEO Lisa Su said the platform can run AI models with up to 200 billion parameters locally.
Price Battle With Nvidia Heats Up
AMD’s pricing places the Halo in direct competition with Nvidia’s DGX Spark, which originally launched at the same $3,999 price. However, Nvidia has since increased the DGX Spark’s cost to $4,699, giving AMD a $700 pricing edge at launch.
Moreover, AMD highlighted performance-per-dollar gains during CES 2026. The company claimed that HP’s Z2 Mini G1a workstation, powered by the same Ryzen AI Max+ 395 Pro chip, delivered 50% more tokens per second per dollar than Nvidia’s competing system on a 20-billion-parameter AI model. That advantage reportedly climbed to 70% when testing a 120-billion-parameter model.
A New Front in the AI Hardware Race
The Ryzen AI Halo marks AMD’s first self-branded AI developer platform, expanding beyond chip supply into full-system competition. In addition, the machine supports AMD’s ROCm software ecosystem and developer tools such as LM Studio, ComfyUI, and VS Code.
Meanwhile, competing mini-PCs using the same AMD chip already exist at significantly lower prices from third-party vendors. Because of that, AMD’s premium pricing may face scrutiny unless its software optimization and direct support offer enough added value to justify the cost.
