Tim Cook rallies staff, says AI revolution bigger than internet and Apple will invest to grab it

India Today

20 hours ago

Apple CEO Tim Cook has told employees that the company is going 'all in' on artificial intelligence, describing it as a technology revolution on par with, or even greater than, the internet and the smartphone era. According to Bloomberg, Cook delivered the message in a rare allhands meeting held in the company's oncampus auditorium, following the iPhone maker's latest earnings report. The address was aimed at energising Apple staff around AI and what Cook called the company's 'amazing' pipeline of future products.advertisement'Apple must do this. Apple will do this. This is sort of ours to grab,' Cook told staff. 'We will make the investment to do it,' he added.The CEO compared the rise of AI to past technological shifts. 'We've rarely been first,' he said. 'There was a PC before the Mac; there was a smartphone before the iPhone; there were many tablets before the iPad; there was an MP3 player before iPod. This is how I feel about AI.'
Cook said the company was 'open' to mergers and acquisitions to accelerate progress. Reports have suggested that Apple has even weighed up potential acquisitions, including AI search engine Perplexity and the French startup Mistral AI.Apple was months behind OpenAI, Alphabet and Microsoft when it announced its Apple Intelligence features last year – and even then, several of those tools failed to arrive in time for the iPhone 16 launch, leading to some awkward delays and controversy.But Cook downplayed concerns about the slow rollout and said that perhaps not first, but Apple delivers the best. However, he urged employees to speed up how quickly AI is integrated into Apple's work. 'All of us are using AI in a significant way already, and we must use it as a company as well,' Cook said. 'To not do so would be to be left behind, and we can't do that.'AI strategy and Baltra chipsCook noted that 12,000 new hires had joined Apple over the past year, with 40 per cent of those roles focused on research and development. Much of this effort ties into Apple's AI strategy, particularly its inhouse chip development led by Johny Srouji.Bloomberg has reported that Apple is building a new cloudcomputing chip, codenamed Baltra, specifically designed to power AI features. Alongside that, a dedicated AI server manufacturing facility is being established in Houston.Tariffs, retail expansion and new marketsThe meeting also touched on other priorities. Cook acknowledged that tariffs from the Trump administration remain a challenge, saying they will create a $1.1 billion headwind for the current quarter. Even so, Apple has remained optimistic about sales and highlighted that App Store revenue grew by a doubledigit percentage last quarter despite regulatory pressures in Europe and elsewhere.advertisementRetail is also a focus area. Cook said Apple is 'opening outlets in India, the United Arab Emirates and China this year, and is preparing to add its first location in Saudi Arabia next year'.'We need to be in more countries, and you'll see us go into more emerging markets in particular,' he told employees. That, he stressed, 'doesn't mean Apple will ignore other places,' but a 'disproportionate amount of growth' will come from new regions.Cook also addressed the company's climate goals, Apple TV+ growth and the increased regulatory scrutiny of Big Tech. 'The reality is that Big Tech is under a lot of scrutiny around the world,' he said. 'We need to continue to push on the intention of the regulation and get them to offer that up, instead of these things that destroy the user experience and user privacy and security,' he added.- Ends