Apple has an AI problem, and it’s hoping to solve it in the traditional manner: by pouring money on it.
In a conference call with investors Thursday, Apple CEO Tim Cook acknowledged that the company’s costs for developing artificial intelligence technology continue to grow. He also mentioned that the company is not just open to acquiring companies with AI expertise — it’s already actively doing so.
Nevertheless, the AI-enhanced version of Siri won’t arrive before 2026.
AI-enhanced Siri still many months away
The centerpiece of Apple’s AI efforts is Siri, with the voice assistant getting a hefty infusion of artificial intelligence. The company promised “the start of a new era for Siri” at WWDC in June 2024. The company laid out a glowing future for the AI assistant — but over a year later, the project has yet to launch after a significant delay announced in March.
And the Siri upgrade won’t launch in 2025. “We’re making good progress on a more personalized Siri, and as we’ve said before, we expect to release these features next year,” Cook told analysts Thursday.
Still, the smarter Siri is only one component in a larger AI effort dubbed Apple Intelligence. Many of the features are out already, like Writing Tools. More are on the way, built into iOS 26 and other platforms in the autumn.
Fixing Apple AI will cost
Spending on AI came up repeatedly during a conference call with analysts after Apple announced blockbuster financial results for the June quarter on Thursday.
That gave Apple’s CEO an opportunity to say, “We are significantly growing our investment. We did during the June quarter, we will again in the September quarter. I’m not putting specific numbers behind that at this point.”
Later, another analyst on the call with Apple executives pointed out that the company’s capital expenditures have grown considerably this year. The reason? AI.
“I would say a pretty significant driver, as Tim talked about, is the fact we are increasing our investment significantly in AI, so that is certainly a component of it,” said Kevan Parekh, Apple’s new chief financial officer, during the call.
In response to a follow-up question about future AI spending, Parekh said, “We are increasing our investment significantly in AI. You are going to continue to see our [capital expenditures] grow. It’s not going to be exponential growth, but it is going to grow, you know, substantially. And a lot of that’s a function of the investments we’re making in AI.”
AI-related acquisitions
One of the ways Apple acquires technology and talent is by buying small companies. It’s using this strategy for AI as well. That’s how Apple originally got the tech for Siri, after all — by acquisition. That practice continues.
“We’ve acquired around seven companies this year,” Cook told the analysts. “And that’s companies from all walks of life, not all AI-oriented. Think of it as one every several weeks.”
He said the company remains open to strategic mergers and acquisitions.
“We are not stuck on a certain size company, although the ones that we have acquired thus far this year are small in nature,” Cook said. “We basically ask ourselves whether a company can help us accelerate our roadmap.”
While he declined to name any names, Cook’s comment that Apple is “very open to M&A” will likely restart speculation that Apple wants to acquire Perplexity AI.
Apple is all-in on AI
Cook appears to be trying to lay to rest questions about whether Apple understands the critical role artificial intelligence will play in the future.
“The way that we look at AI is that it’s one of the most profound technologies of our lifetime, and I think it will affect all devices in a significant way,” he said Thursday.
Ed Hardy has been writing full-time about tech for 25 years, and using it for much longer than that. His intro to Apple was a Macintosh Classic II (which he still has), but now he uses a 13-inch iPad Pro as his primary computer. He’s written for NotebookReview, TabletPCReview, and Brighthand, as well as other sites.
