Apple’s limited AI exposure is paying off again
Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta are negative this month.
While not exactly riding high amid the broad tech and AI sell-off, Apple has the distinction among its Big Tech peers of having mostly maintained its stock price this month, while most others, including Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta, have gone into the negative.
Once again, it appears Apple’s relatively limited exposure to AI, while not quite an asset, isn’t the demerit it could be. Even as the company has increased its capital spending to build out its AI capabilities, that spending still pales in comparison to its peers.
Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta combined spent nearly $100 billion on purchases of property and equipment last quarter alone. Apple, which has largely failed to deliver the AI iPhone features it promised more than a year ago, spent a miserly $3 billion last quarter. And at the company’s most recent iPhone event, mentions of AI were mostly MIA.
Apple is still trying to up its AI game, but it’s doing so with the help of Google’s Gemini, paying it $1 billion a year to use the model on its iPhones. Similarly, Apple is continuing with its hybrid data center model, where it uses both its own data centers and third-party capacity, as a way to rein in its own spending.
As a result, Apple, unlike everyone else, has mostly been able to avoid persistent questions about massive AI spending and how exactly it’s going to pay off.
