Apple’s $10B Question

Apple weighs $10B AI acquisitions as Microsoft and Anthropic surge ahead—raising urgent questions about strategy, independence, and survival in the AI race.

The acquisition gamble Apple can’t ignore.

For years, Apple’s strategy has been to refine, not to rush. But AI has exposed a blind spot. While Google, Microsoft, and Anthropic sprint ahead, Siri remains the industry’s punchline. Reports now suggest Apple is exploring acquisitions—from Paris-based Mistral AI to Perplexity—finally admitting that incremental tweaks aren’t enough. But here’s the rub: Apple has never been an acquisition-driven company. Its biggest deal to date was Beats in 2014 at $3B. Compare that with Microsoft’s $13B OpenAI stake, and the gap is glaring. With $75B in cash, Apple can buy almost anyone. The real question: will they? Each passing quarter inflates valuations and shrinks options. If Apple waits too long, even their mountain of cash may not buy relevance in the AI race.

Microsoft, Anthropic, and the fight for independence.

While Apple debates, rivals move. Microsoft just unveiled its first in-house models: MAI Voice 1, a speech engine touted as “one of the most efficient” yet, and MAI-1 Preview, a mid-tier LLM. It’s a hedge against overreliance on OpenAI—but unless Copilot closes its quality gap with consumer ChatGPT, enterprise users will notice. Anthropic, meanwhile, is everywhere: launching a Chrome-based agent, settling a landmark copyright suit, and shifting to train on user data for the first time. The lesson? Independence isn’t optional in the AI era—it’s survival. Apple risks becoming a consumer-facing laggard while its competitors integrate AI deeper into workflows and ecosystems. The acquisition clock is ticking; hesitation is the most expensive move Apple could make.