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Apple 'Open' to Acquisition That Accelerates AI Roadmap

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Apple is "open" to an acquisition that would accelerate its AI roadmap, Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC today. Cook said that Apple sees AI as one of the "most profound technologies of our lifetime," and that the company is "significantly growing" its AI investments.

perplexity ai mac
"We're embedding it across our devices, across our platforms and across the company," Cook said. Apple has already purchased seven companies in 2025. "We're open to M&A that accelerates our roadmap," Cook added.

Apple has been losing key members of its AI team to Meta in recent weeks, and the company is already far behind competitors in AI development.

There have been rumors that Apple is considering working with Anthropic or OpenAI to develop an LLM version of Siri rather than using its own AI technology, but Apple hasn't moved forward with a partnership as of yet.

Many of the high profile AI companies would not be feasible for Apple to purchase, but the company has considered purchasing Perplexity AI. Perplexity is valued at $18 billion, so if Apple did acquire the company, it would mark Apple's largest acquisition to date.

Tags: Earnings, Tim Cook

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Top Rated Comments

sniffies Avatar
sniffies
10 months ago
Before acquiring anything, how about teaching iCloud Mail how to auto-sync notification badges between iOS and macOS?

Or does that require quantum computing?
Score: 30 Votes (Like | Disagree)
C
cameltahoe
10 months ago
There's no rush. Record sales prove customers aren't buying the AI hype train. The media and finance guys tell lies about AI popularity just to bump up their stocks. Go walk about the street and ask regular people about AI and they look at you like you are weird.

Get it right instead of shoehorning it in quickly.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Flojomojo Avatar
Flojomojo
10 months ago
I'm no expert and I haven't tried them all, but Perplexity has been more useful to me than Copilot or ChatGPT because it tries to prioritize accuracy, and it always shows its work. Like the others, it sometimes makes mistakes, but it doesn't lie confidently or hallucinate in my experience. I've paid for the $20/month plan and have been using it more than Google searches lately.

It could be a good fit for the Apple ecosystem if they don't screw it up.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
W
Wx_Man
10 months ago

They're approaching 14 years with Siri. How much more time do they need?

Apple could purchase Perplexity with last quarter's profit, and have a few billion in change left over. If Cook truly sees AI as one of the "most profound technologies of our lifetime", why isn't his company leading it?
It’s because all LLMs are made and continuously trained on scraped data from every known source. None of the AI companies, not OpenAI, not Anthropic, not Meta, not Google, not DeepSeek, not Musk-Grok, etc give a rip for privacy or safety. The very reason all these LLMs exist is totally antithetical to at least what Apple has been preaching and engineering for decades. It is impossible to make a LLM that is competent with ethical, private and safe means. To do so is to limit the LLMs evolution and potential competency. And even then every LLM out there is eventually an unsafe, gaslighting, hallucinating fabulist when it gets beyond a certain amount of tokens. Apple’s dilemma vis a vis AI is not that they can’t competently engineer an LLM in-house or even outright buy Perplexity or even Anthropic. It’s that by doing either Apple instantly stops being Apple. It can no longer claim to be the paragon of safe, private and ethical computing.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
GrassShark Avatar
GrassShark
10 months ago
Doesn't Perplexity rely on models from other companies? Even setting aside their terrible reputation as a company, how would buying them even be helpful to Apple?
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
S
Sippincider
10 months ago

Get it right instead of shoehorning it in quickly.
They're approaching 14 years with Siri. How much more time do they need?

Apple could purchase Perplexity with last quarter's profit, and have a few billion in change left over. If Cook truly sees AI as one of the "most profound technologies of our lifetime", why isn't his company leading it?
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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