M5 Ultra Chip Coming to Mac Studio in 2026

Apple doesn't release an "Ultra" variant for every Apple silicon chip, but the company is planning to debut an M5 Ultra chip in 2026, reports Bloomberg.

mac studio green
The M5 Ultra is slated for the Mac Studio, and it's also likely that Apple will use it in a Mac Pro update. There's no word on when the M5 Ultra might come out, but historically, Ultra chips have followed the Pro and Max chip variants.

Apple already debuted the M5 chip in the MacBook Pro, but we'll be waiting until early 2026 for the M5 Pro and the M5 Max. The M5 Ultra will likely come after that, perhaps in June or even September 2026.

Earlier this year, Apple decided to launch an updated ‌Mac Studio‌ with M4 Max and M3 Ultra chip options, making it clear there was no M4 Ultra. Ultra chips are two Max chips fused together with "UltraFusion" technology, but the M4 Max chip does not have the UltraFusion connector needed for an M4 Ultra chip.

Apple also made it clear that it did not plan to create a high-end Ultra chip for every M-series generation.

There are no other rumors of new features for the ‌Mac Studio‌, so the M5 Ultra update might be focused on internal improvements. Apple is rumored to be developing a pair of new displays, and at least one of those could launch alongside the ‌Mac Studio‌ in 2026.

Related Roundup: Mac Studio
Buyer's Guide: Mac Studio (Neutral)
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Top Rated Comments

fathergll Avatar
14 weeks ago
......waiting for Russian comrades to make their unboxing video
Score: 33 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Spock Avatar
14 weeks ago
When are they going to stop goofing around and discontinue the Mac Pro? It is still on M2 and still $7k.
Score: 24 Votes (Like | Disagree)
novagamer Avatar
14 weeks ago

This will be the most powerful AI machine…

…that doesn’t run AI.
lol what

pytorch runs fine

Local models work fairly well despite the drawbacks of M4 (low inference speed mostly).

M5 will hugely improve this: per GPU core neural acceleration, matrix math improvements, etc. Inference should be significantly faster depending on how high they get the memory bandwidth and what they do with the interposer and SoIC / chip stacking, if it happens this generation.

There are metal optimized libraries that work pretty well and there is an apple-funded CUDA -> MLX workflow in progress.

This machine is going to be excellent for personal and professional AI development / fine-tuning, and for ~$12k it’s going to cost what one nvidia card with 1/5 of the GPU memory does.

If you need really big data nvidia stuff you can just connect to the cloud, but for local work nothing will compare to this for a long time that isn’t 10x the cost.

I say all this also owning a 5090 that’s going into a Linux workstation next week for local CUDA work by the way. :)


Now, fi you were talking about Apple Intelligence… fair point! I have low faith especially given the new rumors that they are not teaming with Anthropic which is an enormous mistake, if true.

Apple’s small models are doing pretty cool stuff but they’re going to take a couple more years to be really relevant relative to the best of what else is out there now, and that is also dependent on them retaining talent. They are doing groundbreaking R&D work with on-device models particularly in RAM constrained areas, but everywhere else they are trailing pretty badly.
Score: 19 Votes (Like | Disagree)
EugW Avatar
14 weeks ago
New Apple displays too then in 2026?


Has it been confirmed that the M5 has the UltraFusion connector?
M5 Max has not yet been released.
Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)
neuropsychguy Avatar
14 weeks ago
That will be a beast of a computer.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
GioGiusi Avatar
14 weeks ago
Been weighing an M4 Max Studio to replace my M1 Pro MBP as main workhorse. I think maybe I can hang on a little longer if an M5 Ultra is on the horizon.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)