Apple CEO Tim Cook ‘Very Open’ to AI Acquisitions, Plans to Increase Investments: Report

Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly highlighted that the company is planning to “significantly” increase its investments in artificial intelligence (AI) technology. The statements were made on Thursday as part of the CEO’s remarks alongside Apple’s third-quarter earnings report. As per the report, the Cupertino-based tech giant is also open to the merger and acquisition route to catch up in the AI race. These comments indicate that the iPhone maker has not given up building an in-house AI tech stack despite several setbacks.

Apple CEO Tim Cook Remains Bullish on AI

According to a CNBC report, Cook said that Apple has acquired seven companies this year so far, and remains “very open” to further acquisitions that can help the tech giant grow faster. “We’re very open to M&A that accelerates our roadmap. We are not stuck on a certain size company, although the ones that we have acquired thus far this year are small in nature,” he was quoted as saying.

Apart from this, the Apple CEO reportedly also stated that the company was “significantly” growing its investment in AI. Alongside resource allocation, the tech giant is also said to be reallocating its staff to ensure more employees are working on AI features. While the company did not mention how it intends to utilise these resources, Cook reportedly mentioned that some of the capital expenditure this quarter will go towards Private Cloud Compute, the company’s private servers for on-cloud AI processing.

“Our focus, from an AI point of view, is on putting AI features across the platform that are deeply personal, private and seamlessly integrated[..]The way that we look at AI is that it’s one of the most profound technologies of our lifetime. It will affect all devices in a significant way,” CNBC quoted Cook as saying.

Apple CEO’s statements on AI highlight that the company still intends to compete with the likes of Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. The iPhone maker has already partnered with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT’s capabilities to its devices, and is rumoured to structure a similar deal with Anthropic.

Separately, according to a report, the tech giant has held internal discussions considering the possibility of acquiring Perplexity. However, no bids have been reported so far.