Catenaa, Friday, August 01, 2025- Apple CEO Tim Cook signaled on Thursday that the iPhone maker was ready to spend more to catch up to rivals in AI by building more data centers or buying a larger player in the segment.
The Company posted quarterly revenue of $94.0 billion for the quarter ended on June 28, a climb of 10% year over year, and quarterly diluted earnings per share of $1.57, up 12% year over year.
Apple has struggled to keep pace with rivals such as Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google, both of which have attracted hundreds of millions of users to their AI-powered chatbots and assistants.
That growth has come at a steep cost, however, with Google planning to spend $85 billion over the next year and Microsoft on track to spend more than $100 billion, mostly on data centers.
During a conference call after Apple’s fiscal third-quarter results, analysts noted that Apple has historically not done large deals and asked whether it might take a different approach to pursue its AI ambitions.
CEO Cook responded that the company had already acquired seven smaller companies this year and is open to buying larger ones.
“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,” Cook said. “We basically ask ourselves whether a company can help us accelerate a roadmap, and if they do, then we’re interested.”
Shares of the company were up by 2% on Friday morning, and the stock is down by over 15% so far this year.
Apple also said on Thursday it plans to spend more on data centers, an area where it typically spends only a few billion dollars per year. Apple is currently using its chip designs to handle AI requests with privacy controls that are compatible with the privacy features on its devices.
Kevan Parekh, Apple’s chief financial officer, did not give specific spending targets but said outlays would rise.
“It’s not going to be exponential growth, but it is going to grow substantially,” Parekh said during the conference call.
“A lot of that’s a function of the investments we’re making in AI.”
