Latest news with #EddyCue
Bloomberg
an hour ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Apple Executives Have Held Internal Talks About Buying AI Startup Perplexity
Apple Inc. executives have held internal discussions about potentially bidding for artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI, seeking to address the need for more AI talent and technology. Adrian Perica, the company's head of mergers and acquisitions, has weighed the idea with services chief Eddy Cue and top AI decision-makers, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The discussions are at an early stage and may not lead to an offer, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private.
Globe and Mail
07-06-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
'Lackluster' WWDC Ahead: Apple Stock (NASDAQ:AAPL) Gains as Strategy Questioned
Consumer electronics giant Apple (AAPL) has been having a bit of a rough time of late, down from the juggernaut it once was, but still very much a part of most people's lives. And with the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) coming up on Monday, difficult questions about Apple's future are being asked. And so far, investors like what they hear, if only somewhat, as Apple shares notched up fractionally in Friday afternoon's trading. Confident Investing Starts Here: Easily unpack a company's performance with TipRanks' new KPI Data for smart investment decisions Receive undervalued, market resilient stocks right to your inbox with TipRanks' Smart Value Newsletter Apple Intelligence has not exactly reached the levels that Apple was hoping for, and this after a year in play. Many of Apple's competitors in this field have made substantial advances, but Apple remains a technological laggard. And with Eddy Cue, Apple's head of services, noting that users '…may not need an iPhone 10 years from now,' that represented a combination of events that definitely did not look good for Apple. But with the WWDC about to fire up in earnest, the focus is shifting to Apple's AI plans, and what it is looking to do now. With that very real possibility that Apple's hardware dominance could be on thin ice, hearing Apple's next moves in the market will be vital to ensuring that shareholders remain interested. However, Samik Chatterjee —who has a five-star rating on TipRanks—with JPMorgan noted that, right now, investors are expecting a 'lackluster' event. What Should Appear The news is difficult enough for Apple right now, but what will it likely roll out at the big show? Reports suggest that a new naming convention for iOS will emerge. While iOS was previously on iOS 18, it will not go to iOS 19. Rather, it will instead go to iOS 26, reports note, as the new convention requires the iOS be the year instead of the version number. Apple is also reportedly planning a major shakeup in the way its software looks. Some figure that it will change to better reflect the Vision Pro's operating system, though there are certain doubts as to how that will work, exactly. Apple may also uncase another app for social gaming, as the Game Center could use a bit of a replacement. But one thing that will likely not show up at WWDC, reports note, is any kind of new hardware. And if this is the case, that 'lackluster' projection of Chatterjee's might be dead-on. Is Apple a Buy, Hold or Sell? Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on AAPL stock based on 16 Buys, nine Holds and four Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 1.9% rally in its share price over the past year, the average AAPL price target of $228.65 per share implies 12.83% upside potential. See more AAPL analyst ratings Disclosure Disclaimer & Disclosure Report an Issue
CNBC
06-06-2025
- Business
- CNBC
At WWDC, Apple's AI strategy comes into question
One year ago, Apple announced Apple Intelligence, its response to the wave of sophisticated chatbots and systems kicked off by the arrival of ChatGPT and the age of generative AI. Analysts said Apple's installed base of more than 1 billion iPhones, the data on its device and its custom-designed silicon chips were advantages that would help the company become an AI leader. But it's been an underwhelming 12 months since then. Apple Intelligence stumbled out of the gate while rivals like OpenAI, Google and Meta have continued to make headway launching new generative-AI models. Now, investors are calling for Apple to do something major to catch up in AI, which is rapidly transforming the tech industry. When CEO Tim Cook speaks at Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference in Cupertino, California, investors on Monday, fans and developers will want to hear how the company's approach to AI has changed. That's especially important after some Apple executives have said that the technology could be the reason the iPhone gets supplanted by the next-generation of computer hardware. "You may not need an iPhone 10 years from now," Apple services chief Eddy Cue said in court last monthin one of the government's antitrust case against Google, adding that AI was a "huge technological shift" that can upend incumbents like Apple. The Apple Intelligence rollout was rocky. The first features launched in October — tools for rewriting text, a new Siri animation and improved voice, and a tool that generates slideshow movies out of user photos — were underwhelming. One key feature, which came out in December, summarized long stacks of text messages. But it was disabled for news and media apps after the BBC discovered that it twisted headlines to display factually incorrect information. But the biggest stumble for Apple came in early March, when the company said that it was delaying "More personal Siri," a major improvement to the Siri voice assistant that would integrate it with iPhone apps so it could do things like find details from inside emails and make restaurant reservations. Apple had been advertising the feature on television as a key reason to buy an iPhone 16, but after delaying the feature until the "coming year," it pulled the ads from broadcast and YouTube. The company now faces class-action suits from people who claim they were misled into buying a new iPhone. Although Apple Intelligence had a rough first year, the company hasn't said much publicly. However, it's reportedly reorganized some of its AI teams. JPMorgan Chase analyst Samik Chatterjee said in a note this week that investor expectations were set for a "lackluster" WWDC, as the company still needs to bring to market the features it announced last year, versus "addressing the more material issue of lagging behind other large technology companies in relation to advancements in AI." Meanwhile, Apple is facing renewed competition in its core business. OpenAI in May acquired the startup io for about $6.4 billion, bringing in former Apple chief designer Jony Ive to build AI hardware. The company hasn't provided details about its future devices. Meta has made a splash with its Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, selling over 2 million units since launching in 2021. The devices use Meta's Llama large language model to answer spoken questions from the user. And last month, Android maker Google said its Gemini models will become the default assistant on Android phones. The company showed Gemini doing things that go beyond Siri's capabilities, such as summarizing videos. Google also announced a $150 million partnership with Warby Parker to develop its own pair of AI-powered smart glasses. A working Apple Intelligence is important for the company to encourage its users to buy new iPhones since devices released before the iPhone 15 Pro in 2023 don't support the suite of features. But AI hasn't been a key driver of sales for smartphones yet, and may not be for years, said Forrester analyst Thomas Husson. "There's been some new cool features and services, but I don't think it has drastically changed the experience yet," Husson said. Apple declined to comment. For years, Apple didn't like the words "artificial intelligence." It preferred the more academic term "machine learning." Apple focused its efforts on what could efficiently run on its battery-powered phones. The AI race, led by OpenAI and Google, was about bleeding-edge capabilities that required high-powered servers based on Nvidia graphics-processing units, or GPUs. Then ChatGPT launched in late 2022, making AI the most important term in Silicon Valley. Soon after, Cook was telling investors that Apple was spending "a tremendous amount of time and effort" on the technology. While Apple Intelligence is based on a series of language and diffusion models that the company trained itself, Apple hasn't publicly competed with Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, or other companies in what are called "frontier models," or the most capable AI systems that often have to be trained on large server clusters packed with Nvidia chips and fast memory. The difference between the way Apple and its rivals approach AI can be seen in the company's approach to capital expenditures. Apple spent $9.5 billion on capital expenditures in its fiscal 2024, or about 2.4% of its total revenue. The iPhone maker has rented the computing power needed to train its foundation models, it revealed last year, from Google Cloud and other providers. Apple's rivals are gobbling up billions of dollars of GPUs to push the technology forward. Meanwhile, Meta, Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft are planning to collectively spend more than $300 billion this year on capital expenditures, up from $230 billion last year. Amazon alone is aiming to spend $100 billion, and Microsoft has allocated $80 billion. Apple's best chance to quickly catch up up may be to do what it's done many times in the past: Buy a company, and turn it into a killer feature. It bought PA Semi in 2008 for $278 million, and turned it into the seed for its semiconductor division. Ahead of releasing the Vision Pro headset, Apple bought over 10 startups that worked on virtual and augmented reality. Even Siri was a startup before Apple bought it for more than $200 million in 2010. With $133 billion in cash and marketable securities on hand as of the start of May, there isn't much Apple can't buy, assuming it could get regulatory clearance. However, OpenAI, Apple's current Siri partner, is likely out of reach with a valuation of $300 billion. And given OpenAI's new relationship with Ive to build hardware, there are reasons for Apple to slow the partnership down. Anthropic, whose Claude chatbot is powered by one of the leading AI models, was valued at $61.5 billion in a funding round in March. In the Google antitrust case, Cue, a senior vice president at Apple, mentioned Anthropic as a potential replacement for Google as the default search option in the iPhone's Safari browser. "They probably need to acquire Anthropic," said Deepwater Asset Management's Gene Munster, who has followed Apple for decades, in an interview. That would be by far Apple's largest acquisition. To date, the most the company has paid is $3 billion, when it bought Beats Electronics in 2014 for $3 billion, part of an effort to catch Spotify in the music streaming market. Apple could buy a company that's developing AI-based apps, even if they're on open-source or other company models. Perplexity, which is currently fundraising at a $14 billion valuation, has shown strong interest in the smartphone market and understanding of the value of being a default AI service. In April, Perplexity announced a partnership with Motorola, and it's reportedly in talks with Samsung to integrate its technology into the South Korean company's version of Android, as well as take investment from the Apple rival. Cue mentioned that Apple had been in discussions with Perplexity about its technology at the May trial. It's also possible for Apple to treat frontier AI like it treated search — as a service that can be filled with a partnership. Apple software chief Craig Federighi implied as much last year at a panel discussion during WWDC, saying that Apple would like to add other AI models, especially for specific purposes, into its Apple Intelligence framework. Federighi specifically mentioned Google, whose Gemini can now fluidly speak to the user and handle input that comes from photos, videos, voice or text. Documents revealed during the Google trial showed executives from Apple, including Cue and M&A chief Adrian Perica, were involved in the negotiations over Gemini. Apple has been designing its own chips since 2010, and with AI in mind since at least 2018. The most powerful Apple M-series chips can tap into something called "unified memory," says WebAI co-founder David Stout, making them ideal for doing AI inference. Apple also includes good GPUs on its chips, he said. WebAI is building software that allows users to fine-tune, train and run big models on consumer hardware. Stout's company has built clusters of consumer-grade Mac Studio computers to run big AI models, like Meta's Llama. "We picked Apple Silicon because we think it's the best hardware for AI," said Stout, adding that in his company's tests, Apple's chips can output 100 million tokens per dollar spent versus 12 million tokens per dollar for an Nvidia H100. Part of Apple's strategy for Siri, announced last summer, was to cajole its developers to build snippets of new code into their apps, which would make it simpler for Apple Intelligence and Siri to use the apps and get things done. While Apple is still pushing "App Intents" — the same system powers stuff like lock screen widgets — the framework for how they work with Siri hasn't been released yet. The threat that advanced AI like Google Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT represents to Apple was underscored by Cue at the trial last month. He suggested that the rise of AI threatened Apple's biggest business. "AI is a new technology shift, and it's creating new opportunities for new entrants," Cue said at the trial last month. There is a growing sense in Silicon Valley that sophisticated AI interfaces might one day replace smartphones and laptops with new devices that are designed from the ground up to take advantage of AI-based interfaces. That could mean people speaking or chatting with their devices to command AI agents, rather than tapping on touch screens or keyboards. Upon joining OpenAI in May, Ive said he believes AI is enabling a new generation of hardware. "I am absolutely certain that we are literally on the brink of a new generation of technology that can make us our better selves," Ive, the iPhone designer who retired from Apple in 2019, said in a video announcing that his company had been acquired. Though AI represents a risk to Apple's current business, Deepwater Asset Management's Munster said the company has more time than many believe to adapt because of so many years of customer loyalty. "This is still something that has existential risk to all these companies, including Apple, but I don't think we're at some break point in the next year around it," Munster said.
Hindustan Times
05-06-2025
- Business
- Hindustan Times
What next for Apple's AI, OpenAI's funding impetus, and an impressive Noise Tag 1
The annual Apple WWDC keynote is next week. You may have heard the rumours about significant redesign and naming scheme changes for iOS, iPadOS and so on. My hunch goes beyond the clickbait and 140 character attention spans. Apple, trying to overcome a deficit that's still increasing every week (the upgraded Siri remains delayed), will reconfigure its Apple Intelligence plans. As consumers, you and I may only see the changes on the interface layer, but my belief is, there's more to that story. I don't foresee any AI company acquisitions, but more on the lines of exclusivity driven core partnerships. There are three names that, I feel, might play a big role. Perplexity, which already has deals in place with Samsung and Motorola to integrate their AI in upcoming phones, could have something to offer Apple as well. It will certainly be more than just a search plug-in, if that partnership has to fructify. Could that means Perplexity's agentic browser plans, intersect with Safari, for instance? Very much a chance of that happening. Case in point, Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of services saying during the Google antitrust trial that, 'We've been pretty impressed with what Perplexity has done, so we've started some discussions with them about what they're doing.' Secondly, Google itself stands to lose a little if Samsung (being by far the largest Android phone OEM) reduces reliance on Gemini which itself has received significant updates recently, with the Perplexity partnership. The ideal recourse would be to find a way to give Gemini a home on the iPhone, beyond the app. Not to be forgotten, is Apple and Google's search partnership. And to that point, it has been noted in the recent antitrust trial that traditional searches are reducing, for the first time, via Safari. That's because of AI, and Gemini is better positioned than anyone else to realign its placement within Safari and Apple's broader OSes. The upgraded Siri, for that matter, alongside OpenAI's GPT search? And finally, Anthropic. With the latest Claude models being touted for their coding skills (as are many others, increasingly so), might find a place behind-the-scenes. Apple's code writing tool for developers, called Xcode, could do well with a Claude layering. Reminds me of Microsoft's Satya Nadella saying recently that, 'maybe 20 to 30 percent of the code that is inside of our repos today in some of our projects are probably all written by software.' That may be a poignant quote, particularly for Apple that missed the AI train the last time, and wouldn't want to do so ahead of the next big chapter. And whichever AI company finds the best partnership alignment with Apple in 2025, stands to gain the most. With things the way they are in the AI space, that'll be a race to the top. We'll most certainly chat about this next week. With every new artificial intelligence (AI) model, inevitably come the claims that they're the best ever at what they do. And that they're better than every rival. When Anthropic released Claude 4 a week ago, the artificial intelligence (AI) company said these models set 'new standards for coding, advanced reasoning, and AI agents'. They cite leading scores on SWE-bench Verified, a benchmark for performance on real software engineering tasks. OpenAI also claims the o3 and o4-mini models return best scores on certain benchmarks. As does Mistral, for its latest, open-source Devstral coding model. It is a common theme, not limited to this troika of AI companies. I talked about the need for 'AI benchmarks' to evolve quickly, else we risk running into the same sort of scenario that unfolded in the PC and smartphone space for years — where one metric (such as processor GHz speeds) fallaciously defined the worth of a product. The Apple AirTag has, irrespective of whatever competition may claim, has remained the most accurate tracker for all things easy to forget and for tracking luggage during your travels. The universal applicability is such, you've to really hide this in your luggage, because thieves know what to search for, and throw it into the nearest bin (or canal). Many have made an Apple AirTag rival in recent years, but none have had the sort of accuracy or consistency. Noise, a company that I've often noted is on a premiumisation trajectory, recently sent something called the Tag 1 Smart Tracker. Priced at ₹1,499 at this time, it's available in Charcoal, Midnight and Ivory colours. It is compatible with Apple Find My network on the iPhone and the Android Find My Device service for Android devices. I was able to seamlessly set up both. In the Find My app on an iPhone, for instance, the Noise Tag 1 shows up just as an AirTag would. The location accuracy and refresh window, seems to be very similar to the AirTag — I had both in the same travel bag, for an even-kneeled comparison. If I left that luggage behind at the hotel when heading out for briefings and the keynote, the Noise Tag 1 generated a notification on the phone that the linked piece of luggage had been left behind, with the location details. In this instance, there was nothing to worry, but clearly the Noise Tag 1 is on the job rather seamlessly. There is a way to chime a lost tracker with the ring mode (it is louder than an AirTag, at least to my ears), and can also be shared with family or friends, if you need help in tracking. It is to be expected that the Noise Tag 1 would have a year's worth of battery life, similar to my experience over the years with an Apple AirTag — both use the same CR2032 type 3V lithium coin cell battery, easily replaceable too. The IPX4 splash resistance should help too, just in case your luggage finds itself immersed in the contents of a leaked bottle of water. The price of the Noise Tag 1 certainly adds value to this proposition, as does the compatibility with Android phones. There are choices aplenty for luggage and item trackers, but most don't do the task as consistently as the Noise Tag 1, or simply don't work with Android as well as an iPhone. For once, no limitations to work around. Ahead of WWDC, Speechify has won the 2025 Apple Design Award for Inclusivity. The developers say this is the most popular app in the world to have anything read out loud to you, with hundreds of voices and more than 50 languages available. The proposition is simple — turn any written text into audio, be it from a document, a scan, a PDF file or a web page. 'The app offers an approachable UI with a variety of accessibility features - Dynamic Type and VoiceOver among them - that make it an instantly helpful tool for everyone: students, professionals, and leisure readers, as well as auditory learners and people with low vision. The design team clearly worked to reduce cognitive load all throughout the app too,' Speechify's Founder & CEO, Cliff Weitzman, tells us. You'll see them on the WWDC main stage. OpenAI has shared details on the next phase of its AI for Impact Accelerator in India. The key statistics include expanded funding and technical support to 11 nonprofits that use AI across multiple domains including across healthcare, education and agriculture, and that brings the total value of technical grants to $150,000. The new solution developers include Educate Girls, Rocket Learning, Noora Health and Digital Green. 'These organisations are solving some of the country's most complex challenges with ingenuity and empathy. The AI for Impact Accelerator - now part of OpenAI Academy - is our way of learning from them, while ensuring frontier technology is being shaped by and in service of real communities,' Pragya Misra, Policy & Partnerships Lead for OpenAI India, tells us. Rocket Learning, for instance, is using WhatsApp and generative AI to deliver personalised early learning experiences for parents and daycare workers, in the hope of improving school readiness across underserved communities. They claim to have reached 4 million children across 11 states. Digital Green is an attempt at scaling peer-to-peer agricultural learning, with curated insights and crop recommendations, to help boost agriculture. Educate Girls claims to have re-enrolled over 2 million girls, and improved learning processes for as many as 2.4 million children across 30,000 villages, while using AI to identify out-of-school girls and help with faster re-enrolment.
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Apple eyes Perplexity as Google search alternative, Bloomberg says
In addition to Samsung's (SSNLF) potential investment Perplexity, Apple (AAPL) is also interested in cooperating with Perplexity, planning to use technology from the AI startup as an alternative to Google (GOOGL) search on the iPhone and to replace the option of integrating ChatGPT in Siri, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports. 'We've been pretty impressed with what Perplexity has done, so we've started some discussions with them about what they're doing,' Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of services, said during recent testimony at a Google antitrust trial. Easily unpack a company's performance with TipRanks' new KPI Data for smart investment decisions Receive undervalued, market resilient stocks right to your inbox with TipRanks' Smart Value Newsletter Published first on TheFly – the ultimate source for real-time, market-moving breaking financial news. Try Now>> See today's best-performing stocks on TipRanks >> Read More on AAPL: Disclaimer & DisclosureReport an Issue Apple App Store revenue grew 13% in May, says Evercore ISI Apple files appeal over EU order on iOS interoperability, WSJ reports 'Keep an Eye on the App Store,' Says Goldman Sachs About Apple Stock Apple (AAPL) Filed Its Appeal Against the EU's DMA Order Apple Stock Needs a Win at WWDC or Risk the Narrative Slipping Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
