Apple CEO Tim Cook has reaffirmed the company’s commitment to artificial intelligence, signaling that Apple will pursue new acquisitions and partnerships to accelerate its AI roadmap.
His comments, made during the company’s Q4 2025 earnings call, mark a more aggressive tone from a firm long viewed as slow to embrace the AI revolution reshaping global technology.
For years, Apple stood out among the world’s major tech players for its conservative approach to artificial intelligence. While rivals like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta have poured tens of billions of dollars into AI infrastructure, large language models, and cloud systems, Apple has largely focused on privacy-preserving AI features within its devices. That stance has drawn criticism from analysts, who say the company risks falling behind in a market expected to transform both consumer electronics and enterprise computing.
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In recent months, however, Cook has faced growing pressure from investors and analysts urging Apple to invest more heavily in AI. Several Wall Street analysts — including those from Morgan Stanley and Wedbush — have projected that Apple’s earnings could surge by as much as 10–15% annually if the company successfully integrates generative AI into its products and services.
If Apple can pull it off again by eventually implanting more AI features on the iPhone, Wedbush’s Dan Ives believes those breakthroughs could boost the company’s market share by another $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion.
According to a Bloomberg Intelligence forecast, AI integration could add over $100 billion to Apple’s market value within a few years, driven largely by demand for AI-enabled iPhones and Macs.
During the earnings call, Cook hinted that Apple’s strategy is shifting toward more aggressive expansion.
“We’re open to pursuing M&A if we think that it will advance our roadmap,” he said, responding to questions about Apple’s acquisition strategy.
The comment suggests Apple may soon begin snapping up smaller AI startups to fill gaps in its portfolio, following in the footsteps of rivals that have spent heavily on AI talent and infrastructure.
In a pre-earnings interview with CNBC, Cook revealed that Apple plans to announce more AI partnerships, building on its collaboration with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into Siri and Apple Intelligence.
“Our intention is to integrate with more people over time,” Cook said, signaling that Apple may look to diversify its AI collaborations to include other major model developers.
Apple’s relatively cautious AI rollout has often contrasted with the breakneck pace of its competitors. Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI and integrated generative AI tools across Windows, Office, and Azure. Google has built its own Gemini models and embedded them into search and productivity apps. Amazon has deployed AI to optimize logistics and expand its AWS cloud offerings. Even Meta has spent billions developing its open-source Llama models.
By contrast, Apple’s investments have been smaller and slower, with much of its focus on privacy-oriented machine learning within its ecosystem. The company’s flagship AI initiative, Apple Intelligence, unveiled earlier this year, relies on a combination of on-device computing and a proprietary cloud system known as Private Cloud Compute (PCC). Cook told investors the PCC technology — designed to process AI data securely — is already being used for certain Siri queries.
He added that Apple recently began manufacturing the servers used for Apple Intelligence in Houston, Texas.
“The manufacturing plant that makes the servers used for Apple Intelligence just started manufacturing in Houston a few weeks ago, and we’ve got a ramp planned there for use in our data centers,” Cook said.
Still, analysts argue that infrastructure upgrades alone may not be enough. “Apple cannot be looking at this AI Party through the window,” Ives told CNBC FastMoney in August. “The time has come for Cupertino to make a big move on AI innovation to avoid this ‘BlackBerry Moment.’”
Cook acknowledged during the call that AI is increasingly influencing consumer preferences. “I would say that Apple Intelligence is a factor, and we’re very bullish on it becoming a greater factor,” he said, implying that customers’ appetite for AI-powered devices could soon reshape Apple’s sales trajectory.
The broader industry context makes Apple’s pivot even more critical. Nvidia, whose chips power most large-scale AI systems, has become the world’s first $5 trillion company, while Microsoft’s market value has surged on the back of AI optimism. Global demand for AI infrastructure has also spurred massive investments in countries such as India, where Amazon, Google, and Nvidia are all helping build new data centers to meet the computing needs of the AI era.
The challenge now for Apple is to prove it can catch up — and perhaps redefine AI in a way that fits its longstanding brand of privacy, integration, and seamless hardware-software design.