(Apple)

Apple is packing a growing number of self-built custom chips into its gadgets

Fifteen years ago, Apple started on a journey to build its own custom chips. Today, more and more core functions are running on Apple silicon.

Jon Keegan

9/15/25 10:27AM

The sleek industrial design of Apple’s iPhones and watches was the obvious the star of last week’s product release event. But beneath the ceramic shields, proprietary alloys, and aluminum unibodies, you’ll find more and more chips that are custom designed by Apple.

For 15 years, the company has been steadily moving away from third-party chips in favor of designing its own. Apple has repeatedly shown the advantages of owning the entire “tech stack” — when you build the software and the hardware, you can optimize power consumption and enable custom features that your competitors can’t.

Apple designs its own chips, but most of them have been manufactured by TSMC in a close partnership that has made Apple one of the chip giant’s largest customers.

During last week’s Apple event — which introduced the new iPhone Air, iPhone 17 lineup, and refreshed Apple Watches — the company spotlighted two new custom Apple silicon chips. It showed off the N1, “a new Apple-designed wireless networking chip that enables Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread,” and the C1X, a second-generation cellular modem chip, which both debut in the new ultrathin iPhone Air.

A 15-year journey

After some collaborations with Samsung for its early iPhone chips, Apple’s A4 chip was the first one that the company touted as an Apple custom chip, which Steve Jobs debuted when he introduced the original iPad in 2010.

A decade later, in 2020, Apple moved away from Intel processors for its Mac computers. The M1 processor was a system on a chip (SoC), which packed a CPU, GPU, security, and I/O control all onto one chip. Designing a custom chip for the Mac allowed Apple to boost power and efficiency, as it controlled both the software and hardware. Apple said that the M1 resulted in twice the performance of an Intel-powered PC for one-quarter of the power.

The company has also pushed into cellular connectivity. While the iPhone 16 still used a cellular modem from Qualcomm, it introduced the first Apple-designed C1 cellular modem chip in the low-cost iPhone 16e.

Over the years, Apple has expanded its custom silicon to support more and more of the functions of its products.

Developing its own C series cellular modem chip was a major achievement, as it sits at heart of the iPhone’s core purpose: connecting to cellular networks for voice and data. On its first-quarter 2025 earnings call, when asked about the first-generation C1 chip, Apple CEO Tim Cook framed the effort as the beginning of a long-term strategy:

“We’re super excited to ship the first one and get it out there, and it’s gone well. We love that we can produce better products from a point of view of really focusing on battery life and other things that customers want, and so we have started on a journey, is the way I would put it.”

The next frontier

With so many of the existing features already switched over to Apple silicon, the company is now looking toward an area where it badly needs to catch up: AI.

The Wall Street Journal reported last year that Apple has been collaborating with TSMC on making its own AI chips for its data centers that will power features for Apple services, a move out of step with the rest of the industry, which has favored GPUs made by Nvidia.

Apple’s years of experience building custom chips gives it an edge over other tech companies like OpenAI, Amazon, and Google, which have recently started doing the same.

Jon Keegan3/27/26

Judge blocks Pentagon’s move to blacklist Anthropic

A federal judge in Northern California has granted a preliminary injunction blocking the Pentagon from labeling Anthropic as a national security supply chain risk.

The ruling temporarily prevents the Defense Department from restricting the AI company’s access to federal contracts amid a dispute over its refusal to allow certain military and surveillance uses of its technology. The designation could also have shifted lucrative government work toward competitors, including OpenAI.

Earlier this month, Anthropic, the company behind Claude, sued 17 federal agencies and their heads, alleging the government exceeded its statutory authority.

Rani Molla3/27/26

Report: SpaceX’s record IPO may grant preferential access to retail investors and Tesla shareholders

SpaceX’s impending IPO could raise $40 billion to $80 billion and rank as the largest ever — as well as one of the most unconventional.

The Wall Street Journal reports several ways CEO Elon Musk is considering breaking with IPO norms:

Investors in his other companies, including Tesla, could receive preferential access to shares.
Individual investors may get a third or more of the allocation, far above the typical ~10% mark.
Instead of a traditional road show, Musk wants investors to visit SpaceX facilities in person.

Exclusive | The SpaceX IPO Will Be Just as Unconventional as Musk Himself

Investors in his other companies, including Tesla, could receive preferential access to shares.
Individual investors may get a third or more of the allocation, far above the typical ~10% mark.
Instead of a traditional road show, Musk wants investors to visit SpaceX facilities in person.

Rani Molla3/26/26

Tesla released estimates for Q1 deliveries and they’re lower than analysts expected

Ahead of first-quarter earnings next month, Tesla released its own company-compiled Wall Street consensus estimate for deliveries: 365,645 vehicles. While that’s lower than the 382,000 FactSet consensus estimate, it represents a nearly 9% jump from Q1 2025, when Tesla sold 336,681 vehicles.

Tesla started releasing its own consensus estimates to the public — not just institutional investors — for the first time in Q4 2025. The move was seen as a way to temper investor expectations, as other estimates were too high. Last quarter, Tesla’s compilation was closer to actual numbers, which fell 16% year over year.

The market-implied odds from event contracts suggest 64% of traders think Tesla’s Q1 deliveries will be more than 350,000, 44% think it will be higher than 360,000, and just 21% have it at higher than 370,000.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

The toughest AI benchmark just got a whole lot tougher

ARC-AGI-3 is the latest version of a clever benchmark that challenges AI models to solve mini video games with no written instructions.

Jon Keegan3/26/26

Rani Molla3/26/26

The US leads the world in robotaxi deployments

Every day it seems another robotaxi launches somewhere in the world. But most of them are in the US.

Of the 171 active robotaxi deployments globally, 69 — or 40% — are in the US, according to a new report from the Bank of America Institute. China, the next largest market, accounts for 24% of deployments.

Most of those deployments are still in testing or early commercial stages. Only 10 US cities currently have fully commercial robotaxi operations, defined as services that operate on public roads, carry paying passengers, run fully driverless without a safety driver, and function all day in any weather.

For now, that effectively refers to Alphabet’s Waymo, which operates commercially in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, Phoenix, San Antonio, and the San Francisco Bay Area. That definition excludes competitors like Tesla, whose Robotaxi service uses safety monitors, and Amazon’s Zoox, which has yet to charge customers for rides.