Amid the growing AI race, Apple is reportedly weighing some bold moves to race ahead as pressure mounts from competitors like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI. According to the report by The Information, Apple’s senior executives have discussed the possibility of acquiring fast-rising startups such as Mistral AI or Perplexity to accelerate the AI ambitions.
As per the report, Apple Services head Eddy Cue has been a strong advocate for such a deal, continuing his history of pushing for large-scale acquisitions, including past, unsuccessful proposals to buy Netflix and Tesla. However, the report added, that other leaders within Apple reportedly prefer to build AI capabilities internally rather than rely on costly buyouts.
For the unversed, Mistral AI is a French startup founded in 2023 that has quickly garnered attention and is a rival to US AI giants. It specialises in open-weight large language models and is valued at around $6 billion with backing from Nvidia. On the other hand, Perplexity is led by OpenAI researcher Aravind Srinivas, who has become one of the most prominent names in AI search and is valued at about $18 billion. The Perplexity is backed by Amazon and Nvidia.
Recently, the iPhone maker made the headlines with an acquisition offer to Perplexity. But later, the AI startup denied receiving any acquisition offers from Apple. Interestingly, Apple has historically avoided big-ticket acquisitions so far, and its largest purchases include Beats for $3 billion and Intel’s modem business for $1 billion. Taking over Perplexity would require a far bigger investment.
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In the meantime, reports also claim that Apple is exploring external partnerships to shore up its AI efforts. Recently, the report suggested that Apple is currently exploring integrating Gemini models into Apple Intelligence, while other options involving OpenAI or Anthropic have also been considered. Currently, Siri offers OpenAI ChatGPT for certain queries.
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Ashish Singh
Ashish Singh is the Chief Copy Editor at Digit. He’s been wrangling tech jargon since 2020 (Times Internet, Jagran English ’22). When not policing commas, he’s likely fueling his gadget habit with coffee, strategising his next virtual race, or plotting a road trip to test the latest in-car tech. He speaks fluent Geek. View Full Profile