With Both Apple & AI, Timing Remains Everything

Yesterday, Alex Kantrowitz and I sat down to record our monthly chat for his Big Technology Podcast, and we kicked off talking about the possibility that Tim Cook could be contemplating retiring from his CEO role at Apple. My thought remains that the timing seemingly is perfect right now, and assuming he's thinking about it, he might not get a better opportunity...

Speaking of timing, about 20 minutes into our chat, talking through the situation at Apple that Cook may be handing to John Ternus, his would-be successor, I was trying to think through the main things to focus on with that transition:

Say Ternus is elevated to be CEO. Who’s in charge of AI? They need someone to be in charge. Right now it’s been John Giannandrea. I think everything you read and hear, similar to the Yann LeCun situation at Meta, it sort of feels like the writing is on the wall there. That he will probably not be there for very much longer.

Well, "very much longer" turned out to be a few hours. Right after the podcast went live, Apple announced that Giannandrea would be retiring from Apple.

The rest of the discussion centers around Cook's tenure and how any succession might parallel the ones that took place at Amazon and/or Disney. Is Cook waiting for that "one more thing" to unveil hardware-wise in the form of Smart Glasses? And speaking of hardware, with the seeming pivot back to that being Apple's main narrative (in the face of the AI struggles), does that make Ternus the right guy at the right time, or does his hardware focus hold him back in some way given that Apple is increasingly becoming a Services company?

Continuing on the Giannandrea thread, I noted that it felt like they still needed to bring in someone from the outside to give new life to that group, and that M&A could be the framework for how they refresh their talent (which continues to bleed over to Meta). Well, they're not doing M&A yet, but it seems like they poached AI researcher Amar Subramanya from Microsoft to lead the group. Granted he was at Microsoft less than six months because most of his time was actually spent at Google, much like Giannandrea before him. But JG came from a Google focused on ML – the element of AI that everyone talked about before LLMs came along – Subramanya was seemingly working in the heart of Gemini.

Is is also interesting that he's reporting to Craig Federighi and not Cook (as Giannandrea was). This makes Federighi the de-facto true head of AI, which I put out there as a possibility given the post-Siri shakeup which saw him take over those groups alongside Mike Rockwell.

Alex wanted me to sell him on the new iPhone 17 Pro, which I think I successfully did. Certainly over the iPhone Air, which was just positioned oddly by Apple in the market.

We go on to talk through the Great Big Tech Market Cap Race taking place between NVIDIA, Apple, Google, and Microsoft. And how the ever-shifting narratives around AI are altering that and seemingly bringing those four companies together at the top. Google's "comeback" has impacted not just OpenAI, but NVIDIA and perhaps Microsoft as a result. And, if Google and Apple are truly about to partner to bring Gemini in to help power Siri, the resurgence could help Cupertino's narrative too.

Next up in AI narrative shifts – well, once NVIDIA stops putting their foot in their own mouth – world models? Is that a window for Tesla to come back into the equation? Clearly Elon Musk is angling for that with Optimus...

Who would I bet on? I would do what these companies are doing and bet on all of them – bet on each other, to hedge. But if I had to pick one, probably Google for the reasons I laid out previously before the current stock run. Though I remain intrigued by OpenAI's "AGI or Bust" bet – if they can find enough places to get enough capital to keep going... It's obviously the biggest wildcard in all of this and will be until the capital wells start to dry up.

But I do think it's interesting/worth noting that Google seems to be doing some great product work on top of AI, long OpenAI's strong suit. The new "Dynamic View" mode of Gemini – awful name aside – is incredibly impressive.

Finally, if the worm really is turning with regard to AI spend, is Anthropic's move to focus on profitability in the face of OpenAI's continued growing spend an especially savvy play? Sure, they still need to invest a lot of money to work towards the future of AI, but perhaps mere tens of billions is enough and not hundreds of billions – or trillions.