Apple’s New AI Pivot Is Officially a Screaming Cry for “Help” (If You Can’t Build It, Bribe It)

Hey Siri, define “desperate”... 

Tim Apple has finally caved as he’s signaled that the next big thing out of Cupertino might be… a licensing agreement that might finally make Siri less useless, but only by admitting they can’t actually do it themselves. Translation: According to Bloomberg, the company’s latest “innovation” is calling up OpenAI and Anthropic for help. 

(Source: Giphy) 

In short, Apple is deep in talks with Anthropic and OpenAI about letting someone else’s AI do Siri’s heavy lifting. Meaning, after a decade of “Hey Siri” being a glorified kitchen timer, Apple’s finally admitting their in-house AI is about as sharp as a bowling ball. Instead of building their own LLM from scratch (which, let’s be real, they had more than enough time and money to do), the company is now eyeing a rent-to-own situation with Claude or ChatGPT to drag Siri out of 2011.

The timing of course is a chef's kiss. Apple’s been tripping over itself trying to upgrade Siri with delays, missed launches, a revolving door of execs. Perhaps you’ve heard, but as Apple was making VR goggles nobody asked for, Google and Microsoft were going full-send into mainlining generative AI. And now, Apple is getting cooked for their poor decisions. 

(Source: Bloomberg) 

And internally, it’s been even more of a clusterf**k. First, they kicked their own AI chief, John Giannandrea, to the curb after the last Siri “upgrade” landed with all the impact of a wet fart. Now, Mike Rockwell and Craig Federighi are running the show, and apparently their first move was to see if third-party models could do Siri’s job better than Apple’s own. Spoiler: they can. After a few rounds of testing, execs decided Anthropic’s Claude is the only thing standing between Siri and complete irrelevance. Negotiations are underway, but Anthropic wants a multibillion-dollar annual bag… because why not rinse Apple for all they’re worth? Genius. 

On the technical side, Apple wants whatever model they license to run on their own cloud servers, powered by those overpriced Mac chips, because privacy is the only thing they have left to brag about right now. But even that’s a sticking point… Anthropic wants more cash, and Apple’s already blowing billions trying to keep up.

(Source: Giphy) 

As for the big picture here, and why investors should be sitting up for this: You can clearly see this isn’t a boring licensing deal. If Apple actually ditches its own AI models for Anthropic or OpenAI, it’s a public admission that the company can’t hang in the most important tech arms race of the decade. Meta’s stock is mooning on Zuck’s “Super Intelligence” team, Samsung’s already outsourcing half its AI to Google, and Amazon’s got Anthropic on Alexa+ duty. Meanwhile, Apple’s out here window-shopping for brains just for it’s “Apple Intelligence” to stay relevant. 

And the result of it, is Apple’s “innovation” playbook suddenly reads like a Craigslist ad for “AI, gently used, must work with iCloud.” Which for a company who's spent the better part of its existence being the epitome of “tech advancement” is a major warning sign. On the contrary, it’s the most bullish news that Apple has copped in a while. Shares mooned 2% yesterday, and today they are up an additional 2%. Translation: The best thing you can do sometimes is remove yourself completely, and that’s what Apple is doing. And now, they are getting rewarded for it. I 100% didn’t have this on my 2025 bingo card, that’s for sure.

(Source: Giphy)

For now though, keep your eyes on this story, especially as more details of the deal come out. As always, do your due diligence and place your bets accordingly. Until next time, friends…

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News holds positions in Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Tesla as mentioned in the article.