Apple CEO Tim Cook has informed staff that the business is “all in” on artificial intelligence, portraying it as a technological revolution comparable to, if not larger than, the internet and smartphone age. According to Bloomberg, Cook delivered the message during a rare all-hands meeting convened in the company’s on-campus auditorium following the iPhone maker’s most recent earnings report. The speech was intended to energize Apple employees about AI and the company’s “amazing” pipeline of upcoming goods. “Apple must do this. Apple will do this. “This is sort of ours to grab,” Cook told employees. “We will make the investment to do it,” according to him. The CEO equated the emergence of AI to previous technical advances. “We’ve rarely been first,” he explained. “There was a PC before the Mac, a smartphone before the iPhone, many tablets before the iPad, and an MP3 player before the iPod. This is how I feel about AI. Cook stated that the corporation was “open” to mergers and acquisitions to accelerate growth. According to reports, Apple has been considering prospective acquisitions such as AI search engine Perplexity and French firm Mistral AI. Apple was months behind OpenAI, Alphabet, and Microsoft when it revealed its Apple Intelligence features last year, and even then, some of those capabilities did not arrive in time for the iPhone 16 launch, causing some unpleasant delays and criticism.
However, Cook downplayed worries about the sluggish distribution, stating that Apple may not be first, but it is the best. However, he pushed staff to accelerate the integration of AI into Apple’s operations. “All of us are using AI in a significant way already, and we must use it as a company as well,” says Cook. “To not do so would be to be left behind, and we can’t do that.” Cook stated that 12,000 new employees have joined Apple in the last year, with 40% of those positions focusing on research and development. Much of this endeavor is tied to Apple’s AI agenda, namely its in-house chip development directed by Johny Srouji. According to Bloomberg, Apple is developing a new cloud computing processor, codenamed Baltra, solely to support AI features. Along with that, a specialized AI server manufacturing plant is being built in Houston. The conference also addressed other issues. Cook admitted that the Trump administration’s tariffs remain an issue, estimating a $1.1 billion disadvantage for the current quarter. Nonetheless, Apple remains confident about sales, pointing out that App Store revenue increased by a double-digit percentage last quarter despite regulatory headwinds in Europe and elsewhere. Retail is also a priority area. Cook stated that the company will be “opening outlets in India, the United Arab Emirates and China this year, and is preparing to add its first location in Saudi Arabia next year” .
“We need to be in more countries, and you’ll see us go into more emerging markets in particular,” he said to staff members. That, he underlined, “doesn’t mean Apple will ignore other places,” but a “disproportionate amount of growth” would come from new regions. Cook also discussed the company’s climate ambitions, the rise of Apple TV+, and the rising governmental scrutiny of big tech. “The reality is that Big Tech is under a lot of scrutiny around the world,” he told reporters. “We need to continue to push on the intention of the regulation and get them to offer that up, instead of these things that destroy the user experience and user privacy and security,” according to him.
