Lenovo is rolling out its new AI assistant Qira across its ecosystem. The ambition is greater than a simple chat window: Qira is intended to be the layer where your intent meets your context. That is exactly where Microsoft wants to be with Copilot as well.
“Personal AI should not just be an app waiting for a prompt,” said Dan Dery, VP AI Ecosystem at Lenovo. “It should understand what is important to you and move with you across devices.” During Lenovo Innovation World on the eve of IFA 2026, Qira takes center stage. Qira is a new AI platform that Lenovo introduced earlier this year and should gradually be ready for its major breakthrough.
Because the new devices Lenovo showcased in Berlin, from the Yoga Pro 9n with Nvidia RTX Spark to the colorful IdeaPad Vibe, are primarily the carriers*.* Qira is what Lenovo layers on top.
Love for hybrid #
Luca Rossi, head of the Intelligent Devices group, says with a slight sense of exaggeration that Qira drastically changes the relationship between humans and AI. “In the past, you had to tell technology what to do; you opened an app and performed a task. Now, technology works based on intent. For this, AI must know what you want to achieve and the context in which you want to do it to earn your trust.”
According to Rossi, this can only work in a hybrid context, of which Lenovo is a strong proponent. “Sometimes AI belongs in the cloud, but that is not necessary for every task. Intelligence should reside with your data where it makes sense. Costs, speed, and privacy are becoming increasingly important. As a user, you should not have to wonder where the intelligence comes from, or whether you can trust it.”
Qira did not emerge from nowhere. Two years ago, Lenovo told a similar story under the name ‘AI Now’. AI Now was a local AI assistant that lived on your device, meaning files and data did not have to leave it. With Qira, the company aims to build on that and develop an AI assistant that is not limited to a single device.
AI without borders #
During a press briefing, Dery provides more clarification on the resulting architectural choice. According to him, Qira is not a competitor or replacement for existing AI services. “We don’t want to reinvent the wheel. The idea is to develop an open agentic platform that orchestrates intelligence across your devices and throughout your activities.”
That is a bold statement for a hardware manufacturer that does not own a frontier model. “As an OEM, we can go deeper into the user’s context. Qira brings intelligence from the application level to the system level.”
The priority for Lenovo now is to bring Qira to as many users as possible. As the world’s largest PC manufacturer, it is in an ideal position for this. The hardware threshold was lowered to 16 GB of RAM to run Qira locally. Through subsidiary Motorola, the platform is making the leap to smartphones and even smartwatches. “PCs are becoming increasingly important for low-cost inference, while your smartphone is your most personal device,” says Rossi.
First introduction to Qira #
You now have access to Qira on most recent Lenovo devices. We are testing the AI assistant on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon. You can access Qira with a Lenovo ID. Although the manufacturer states that Qira is not just an app, you can open it via a classic app interface, though the assistant remains active even when not open.
Upon first use, Qira seems no different from any other AI tool you have already used. You can ask questions, look up information, have text written, and create images in the ‘creative zone’. That is also Lenovo’s starting point: Qira must first get to know you. In the knowledge zone, you can share files with Qira, and you can now also integrate it with Gmail, Outlook, and Slack, among others. “Your whole world is in one place,” says Dery.
Sometimes cloud, sometimes local #
The more you share with Qira, the more personalized the service will become. Lenovo makes two promises regarding Qira: local processing is preferred, and no customer data is collected without consent. Based on the question you ask, Qira chooses the most suitable model. It uses locally running models as much as possible, but hybrid does not exclude the cloud. Lenovo offers integrations with AI partners who do prefer the cloud.
Those who enable these cloud functions send data to Microsoft and OpenAI for summaries, chat, and writing assistance, to Perplexity for searches, and to parties like Notion, Expedia, and analytics service Pendo for other functionalities. According to Qira’s privacy policy, synchronized data is kept for up to a year.
In a corporate context, this may be more difficult, while Lenovo claims that businesses benefit most from local AI processing. Qira requests access to sensitive business data and communication to function optimally. For the business portfolio, ThinkShield includes features to monitor and manage AI usage, but Lenovo also wants to bring Qira to personal devices that fall outside the scope of ThinkShield.
Competitor HP introduced a similar intelligence layer for its devices with IQ, but focuses more explicitly on the business market and promises fully local processing. Qira aims broader and is more consumer-oriented. “The boundaries between user profiles are blurring. Every user has multiple ‘roles’ that a device must support. That is why Qira is built around how you live,” explains CMO Emily Ketchen.
Qira is built around how you live.
Emily Ketchen, Chief Marketing Officer Lenovo Intelligent Devices Group
Splitting the pie four ways #
PCs remain central to what Lenovo does. IFA is the ideal occasion to launch a fresh batch of business and consumer laptops and desktops. During his keynote, Rossi shows one laptop after another. From now on, the pie no longer has to be divided only between Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm, because at IFA, the Nvidia RTX Spark makes its first appearance in Lenovo laptops.
To celebrate this, Nvidia joins the stage during the keynote. Nvidia developed its processor largely with local AI processing in mind, and it could become an important piece of the puzzle in Lenovo’s hybrid AI vision. Whether the chip also delivers in practice will have to be seen from product tests.
Lenovo finds like-minded partners among chip manufacturers, but it also needs them at the software level. Microsoft has its own plans with Copilot and Windows. CEO Satya Nadella dreams of Windows as an ‘agentic operating system’ where Copilot has an increasingly prominent place, and Google’s Gemini is also no longer separable from Android.
How these AI platforms will play together remains to be seen. It seems unlikely to us that both PC and smartphone users are waiting for multiple AI assistants that want to watch everything and get in each other’s way.
Unknown territory #
Lenovo Qira is still a platform under construction, and Dery honestly admits that. “This is unknown territory for us. We are not one hundred percent sure, and we never will be. We are convinced, however, that the best AI application will not necessarily be the one with the most advanced model, but the one that knows you best and understands your needs best.”
That is a healthy dose of realism, though it does not stop Lenovo from going full throttle with Qira. With an AI assistant that can break through the boundaries of apps and devices, it potentially holds a unique advantage. If it can deliver on that promise, otherwise Qira will be nothing more than Copilot with a Lenovo flavor.
The best AI is the one that knows you best.
Dan Dery,VP AI Ecosystem Lenovo