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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 9:16AM

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.”

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Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

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Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5