Lenovo Tech World ’24: the key announcements

Lenovo Tech World ’24 took place under the banner of “Smarter AI for all” in Seattle this week, and Lenovo backed up that aim with dozens of different announcements. Here, we cover the ones that could make a genuine difference if smarter AI for all can actually become a reality.

Lenovo makes products ranging from phones (via Motorola, a brand it now owns) all the way up to servers in data centres. To make navigating the sheer volume of stories easier, I’ve split Lenovo Tech World ’24’s announcements into four key categories:

• Putting AI into people’s hands
• Personal AI
• AI in servers and the data centre
• AI to help

Lenovo also announced that it is the new official global technology partner for FIFA, including the 2026 men’s World Cup in North America and 2027 women’s world cup in Brazil. But that has nothing to do with AI,

Lenovo Tech World ’24: Putting AI in people’s hands

The first big announcement is Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 Gen 10 Aura Edition. This follows up the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition that it launched at IFA 2024 in September.

Aura Edition laptops include AI-enhanced “Smart Modes” that aim to automatically enhance things like security (for example, detecting that you’re on a public Wi-Fi network and applying extra security measures) and make sharing files easier with devices.

The X1 2-in-1 includes Intel’s Core Ultra 200V processors, so include a powerful enough NPU to take advantage of Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC tools. And its battery life should last for long enough on battery that you don’t need to worry about bringing the charger. (For real, not just in benchmarks.)

It’s a 14in laptop, with a choice of OLED or IPS panels, and comes with up to 32GB of RAM and 2TB of storage. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in1 Gen 10 Aura Edition goes on sale in February 2025, with an expected starting price of $2,199.

Lenovo also announced Smart Connect, which connects Motorola phones and Lenovo tablets with your AI-enhanced Lenovo ThinkPad – and means the phone (or tablet) can access the NPU. It’s only in beta, but the basic idea is to make AI local rather than needing to reach out to the cloud every time you have a question.

Moto also showcased a bunch of AI features that it’s testing for its phones. These include tools to help you focus on your work (or play) without distractions, to personalise the “AI assistant” in your phone so that it better understands your needs and a catch-up tool that brings important messages to the fore.

Lenovo Tech World ’24: personal AI

I originally was going to call this section software and services, but that’s not quite right. Instead, I settled on the umbrella term of “personal AI” because that’s what Lenovo is pushing. An AI that is personal to you.

Perhaps the best example of this is Lenovo AI Now. This is a local AI agent that sits on your Lenovo devices (such as the new ThinkPad above) and only runs on the local NPU – so no sending data to the cloud. You can see examples of questions you might ask it in the screenshot below

On-stage, Lenovo welcomed a student (and previous intern) demonstrate Lenovo Learning Zone. The idea here is that you could transcribe a lesson, say, and upload various other materials. Lenovo’s Learning Zone will process all that information so that it can act as tutor and even a quizmaster. So, potentially, it could help you discover your weak points and hone in on them.

Then we come to Lenovo AI Buddy, which is hardware rather than software. It’s very much a concept device, but here Lenovo’s Research team adapted an existing Lenovo mini PC design and bolted on a circular screen with microphones. Very much like an Amazon Echo, you can then ask it questions, at which point a pair of cartoon eyes will blink at you to show that it’s thinking, before producing the answer on-screen.

Lenovo Tech World ’24: AI in servers and the data centre

I spent some time at Tech World ’24 talking to Scott Tease, General Manager of Artificial Intelligence and High-Performance Computing at Lenovo. He’s also a great talker. “On one side of my mouth, I’m very happy that everybody’s talking about liquid cooling,” he said, referring to the sudden uptick in liquid-cooled servers in data centres in response to the compute demands of AI accelerators.

“On the other side of my mouth, I’m a little bit like, what in the hell is going on? We’ve been talking about liquid cooling for a decade, and now everybody’s coming on and saying like they invented it.”

But Scott was also talking about liquid cooling at Tech World, as Lenovo announced the sixth generation of Neptune Water Cooling. This is thanks to the also new Lenovo ThinkSystem N1380 Neptune chassis, which allows customers to run 100KW+ server racks without specialised air conditioning

An even bigger announcement: the Lenovo Hybrid AI Advantage with Nvidia. “Delivering Hybrid AI requires leveraging a purpose-built portfolio and AI services expertise that simplifies the path to AI and enables real-world applications for businesses,” said Lenovo Chairman and CEO Yuanqing Yang. In other words, make it easy and make it practical.

The initiative also aims to help “customers achieve outcomes faster by enabling their people to access relevant intelligence across personal, enterprise and public AI platforms,” Yang added.

And to make that initiative very real, Lenovo also announced a new server: the ThinkSystem SC777 V4 Neptune. This is based on the ThinkSystem N1380 Neptune and packs Nvidia Blackwell and Nvidia GB200 silicon, enabling, the company claims, “trillion-parameter AI models in a compact design”.  

Lenovo Tech World ’24: AI to help

Lenovo announced three interesting AI tools – still under development – that aim to support people in need. I cover them in more detail in a separate article, Lenovo reveals how it’s using AI to actually help.

First up is Alzheimer’s Intelligence, which allows people (including families of those who have symptoms of dementia) to ask a 3D avatar called Liv about living dementia. It’s like ChatGPT, but you ask the questions and Liv replies as if he was speaking to you.

If trials prove successful, Lenovo expects to roll out Alzheimer’s Intelligence for public use.

Lenovo is confident enough in AI Lullaby that it used the tool to open the keynote. Or to be precise, Erin Taylor – who lives with a condition called ALS that often robs victims of their voice over time – introduced Lenovo Chairman and CEO Yuanqing Yang.

On the Tech World ’24 showfloor, I also spoke to Hildebrando Lima, part of Lenovo Research in Brazil, about the work he’s doing with the Heart Institute of Saint Paulo. In short, they have co-developed a heart-monitoring platform called Trada that detects symptoms of arrhythmia.

The chest-mounted monitor sends ECG readings back to the hospital, where AI analyses it for dangerous signs. Then doctors can take action, such as bringing the patient back into hospital for immediate treatment.

Photos from Lenovo Tech World ’24