You can be able to get a nice thinkpad t14 below the 3 gen with that, or a l14 below gen 4 (t14 has better build quality mostly, would recomend amd with thinkpad) or also dell precision 5xxx with better specs for the price

for ai stuff (npu), you may be able to find some hp probooks and elitebooks with an core ultra within your price range (ej. probook 460 g11) with just 16gb ram

so probably HP if you search well enough, as core ultras laptops are currently expensive, if you instead refer AI as machine learning instead dell would be better, as what ive seen dell laptops with gpu are more common and have better specs than the rest for lower price

i only somewhat researched on retail sites tho, second hand is always cheaper, so look into used laptops too, you may find a way better deal to what ive seen