Dell Pro Max 16 Plus Qualcomm
Dell has announced retail availability of the new Pro Max 16 Plus, a mobile workstation that brings datacentre style AI inferencing to a single laptop. The system is built around the Qualcomm AI 100 PC Inference Card, configured here with two NPUs and 64 GB of dedicated AI memory for sustained FP16 workloads.
Rather than targeting casual AI features such as background blur or voice enhancement, the Pro Max 16 Plus is aimed at professionals who need to run large models locally. Dell says the dual NPU design can support models with up to around 120 billion parameters directly on the device, with predictable latency and full FP16 accuracy.
The company is pitching the machine at use cases where cloud dependence is either impractical or unacceptable. In healthcare, clinicians in remote or mobile clinics can run image analysis on high resolution MRI or CT scans directly on the laptop, keeping sensitive patient data on device while still getting rapid results. In finance, legal and government, analysts can run fraud detection, risk models and document classification inside air gapped or tightly controlled environments.
Dell also highlights benefits for engineers and researchers. AI developers can benchmark and iterate models locally without waiting for shared cloud queues, while robotics and computer vision teams can process live sensor feeds, and close real time decision loops in the field. The company describes the concept as an “edge server in a backpack”, with high fidelity AI performance that can move with teams rather than staying in a rack.
Under the hood, the Qualcomm AI 100 PC Inference Card is positioned as a complement rather than a replacement for GPUs. While GPUs continue to handle graphics, simulation and training, the discrete NPU focuses on sustained inferencing with lower power draw and more consistent behaviour over long sessions, and is designed to sit alongside the system CPU and GPU.
The Pro Max 16 Plus will support both Linux and Windows environments. The Linux configuration is available from 26 November 2025, with a Windows variant scheduled to follow in early 2026. Dell says the system will integrate with its existing AI PC management tools on Windows, allowing IT teams to roll the machine into standard security and lifecycle policies.
