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Apple of my AI

Even Apple is leaning into AI spending

After taking a more disciplined approach, Apple is spending more on AI capex, but didn’t give much info on strategy.

8/1/25 8:16AM

Apple’s more disciplined approach to AI spending seems to have failed it, as its AI capabilities continue to lag its peers and its upgraded AI assistant is still a ways off (expected “next year”).

But as its Big Tech peers report blockbuster earnings thanks to blockbuster spending on AI, Apple seems to have changed its tune.

To wit, this is what CEO Tim Cook said in January, around the time DeepSeek’s lower-cost models hit the scene and it momentarily looked like Apple’s strategy of measured AI investment was a good one. AI was mentioned about five times on that call:

“From a capex point of view, we’ve always taken a very prudent and deliberate approach to our expenditure, and we continue to leverage a hybrid model, which I think continues to serve us well.”

And this was what Cook said last night on the company’s earnings call for the period ending in June, when the term “AI” was dropped about 20 times:

“We see AI as one of the most profound technologies of our lifetime. We are embedding it across our devices and platforms and across the company. We are also significantly growing our investments.”

Apple’s quarterly spending on purchases of property and equipment grew about 60% year on year, according to data from FactSet, to $3.5 billion. Year to date, that spending is up about 45%. While that’s still a drop in the bucket compared to its Big Tech peers, it’s growth nonetheless. The company also says it plans to significantly grow its AI investment in the September quarter.

Regarding what Apple plans to do with that increased AI investment, Cook was a bit lighter on Apple’s actual AI strategy and didn’t mention specific acquisitions besides saying the company is “very open to M&A that accelerates our road map.”

“Our focus from an AI point of view is on putting AI features across the platform that are deeply personal, private and seamlessly integrated. And of course, we’ve done that with more than 20 Apple Intelligence features so far from visual intelligence to cleanup to writing tools and all the rest... We are also reallocating a fair number of people to focus on AI features within the company. We have a great team, and we're putting all of our energy behind it.”

Rani Molla1h

Cybertruck battery material supplier writes down Tesla deal by 99%

South Korea’s L&F Co., a supplier of battery material for Tesla’s “apocalypse-proof” Cybertruck, has written down the value of its Tesla contract by more than 99%, Bloomberg reports — another sign that Cybertruck sales are faltering.

The company cited changes in supply quantities, slashing a contract valued at nearly $3 billion in 2023 to about $7,000 now.

Tesla Cybertruck Flop Proves Costly for South Korean Supplier

Rani Molla3h

Estimates for Tesla’s Q4 deliveries are declining

Analysts across the board are expecting Tesla’s fourth-quarter deliveries to decline from last year, as record deliveries fueled by the end of the EV tax credit come to grips with the actual end of the EV tax credit. And as the end of the quarter nears, estimates have sunk further.

Currently the FactSet consensus estimate expects Tesla to deliver 449,000 vehicles in Q4, down 9.5% from last year’s 496,000 and down from 450,000 earlier this month. Bloomberg now pegs the number at 445,000, down from a 448,000 consensus estimate at the start of December.

Prediction markets are even less bullish. The market-implied odds derived through event contracts show that less than a quarter of traders believe Tesla will surpass 430,000 deliveries in the quarter ending December. The actual delivery numbers are expected to be released in early January.

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

How many vehicles analysts think Tesla will deliver this quarter

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

Tesla has two days to remove Robotaxi safety drivers in Austin to reach Elon Musk’s repeated goal

It doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.

Rani Molla4h

Jon Keegan12/24/25

Chinese AI chatbots reportedly must answer 2,000 questions, prove censorship compliance

For American companies building AI today, it’s basically a free-for-all, a self-regulation zone with zero federal restrictions.

But for Chinese AI companies, the Chinese Communist Party exerts strict control over what models get released and what questions they cannot answer.

A report in The Wall Street Journal details the rigorous tests that AI models are subjected to before being released on the global stage to compete with Western AI models.

AI models must answer 2,000 questions that are frequently updated and achieve a 95% refusal rate for queries related to forbidden topics, like the Tiananmen Square massacre or human rights violations, according to the report.

The strict regulatory framework does have some safety advantages, such as preventing chatbots from sharing violent or pornographic material as well as protections from self-harm, an issue that American AI companies are currently wrestling with.

China Is Worried AI Threatens Party Rule—and Is Trying to Tame It

A report in The Wall Street Journal details the rigorous tests that AI models are subjected to before being released on the global stage to compete with Western AI models.

Rani Molla & Jon Keegan12/24/25

Report: OpenAI has started mocking up what ads in ChatGPT could look like

2025 saw OpenAI ink a flurry of massive deals. To pay for it all, the company has realized that it can’t get there on $20-per-month subscriptions alone; it also needs to monetize its hundreds of millions of free users.

To this end, despite repeatedly denying that ads are coming to ChatGPT, a new report says OpenAI is actually working through all those details.

Citing people familiar with the discussions, The Information reports employees have discussed different ways to prioritize sponsored information in ChatGPT in response to relevant queries.

Since ChatGPT burst onto the scene in late 2022, its offerings have been ad-free, relying instead on a freemium subscription model. But with Google recently telling advertisers it plans to bring ads to Gemini next year, and with OpenAI burning through truckloads of cash, the pressure to follow suit is growing.

OpenAI is looking at its AI model-developing competitors Meta and Google, which are pulling in hundreds of billions of dollars per year in advertising revenue, to arrive at this conclusion. It’s also seemingly inspired by Amazon’s (and Google’s) idea of sponsored product placement.

Per the report, in addition to trying to build new kinds of ad units, OpenAI is considering a few options:

Leaning into chats that are clearly about buying a product and giving priority placement to sponsored results — though this works out to only about 2.1% of queries, according to OpenAI.
Showing ads based on the treasure trove of information it has on users, by mining their chat histories.
A “sponsored” sidebar showing ads related to the conversation.

But the company realizes it has to be careful to not turn off users, who might not trust a chatbot that peppers sensitive conversations with ads.

OpenAI’s Ads Push Starts Taking Shape