Apple Might Pursue Massive AI Investment

Tech company Apple is known to be notoriously close-to-the-vest when it comes to making announcements, preferring to keep loyal fans and die-hard investors in the dark until the timing is right.

The company’s "one more thing" mentality, reflected by founder Steve Jobs's surprising product reveals at Apple keynote conferences, appears shared by current CEO Tim Cook. In contrast to other big tech leaders, including Elon Musk, Cook often lets Apple's products do the talking.

As a result, investors often look closely at Cook’s comments during conference calls, looking for clues to what he may have planned for the company next.

During Apple’s second-quarter earnings conference call, Cook may have dropped his guard a little when he offered an interesting response about Apple’s massive cash stockpile and artificial intelligence ambitions.

Apple reported a solid June quarter that outpaced analysts' expectations.

Revenue was a whopping US$ 94 billion, up 10 percent year over year, and almost US$ 5 billion better than Wall Street expected. Net income was over US$ 23 billion, resulting in earnings per share, or EPS, of US$ 1.57, up 12 percent from one year ago, and 14 cents ahead of estimates.

And that’s precisely what investors want to see happen.

While competitors like Google have gone all in on artificial intelligence, developing the AI chatbot Gemini, Apple’s AI strategy has been criticized as too little, too late.

The company’s arguably slow development of AI solutions relative to peers has left many investors wondering if Tim Cook’s number-crunching mindset sets Apple on a course of missing out on the most significant opportunity since the dawn of the Internet.

However, during Apple’s earnings conference call, Cook acknowledged that he’d consider accelerating Apple’s AI efforts by using its massive cash war chest.

When Citi analyst Atif Malik asked about the prospects of "big M&A," Cook responded bluntly.

"We've acquired around seven companies this year," said Cook on the call. "We're very open to M&A that accelerates our road map ... We are not stuck on a certain size company."

Cook said he didn’t have anything to announce currently, but his willingness to consider a big deal could mean that reports of interest in Perplexity, a major AI player, may have merit.

Cook aims to accelerate Apple's development timeline, ostensibly via internal research and development and smaller bolt-on deals. However, if he really wanted to, he could do a deal to acquire Perplexity that could, as he put it, "help us accelerate a road map."