Apple's AI Bet Is to Let Others Spend the Trillions

The leaders in artificial intelligence are dumping billions of dollars into compute, the computing power required to build and operate advanced AI systems, but one big tech company has kept its wallet closed.

Tech giants including Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI poured up to $500 billion into AI infrastructure in 2025, and their investment may grow to $3 trillion by 2028.

But Apple hasn't followed suit. This week, Oracle of Finance Michael Kao explains why not:

Just had lunch with a friend who is a senior exec at $AAPL, who reports directly to Tim Cook. I asked him about whether their AI strategy (or seeming lack thereof) was a deliberate strategic decision to avoid the massive land grab for compute. Paraphrased answer: “Absolutely. We don’t see how these guys are going to achieve adequate ROIs on their spend, and we are just focused on how to leverage AI into our product mix. We have no interest in participating in this feeding frenzy.”
— Michael Kao

Kao is a former hedge fund executive and a successful investor.

Apple has not joined the AI arms race, but its customers can still access the latest large language models. When you ask Siri a tough question, it offers to forward the query to ChatGPT.

Kao says he thinks Apple may have the last laugh. It will get the benefit of large language models without having to pay the cost of developing them. On the other hand, the AI leaders may never make a sufficient return on the trillions of dollars they plan to invest.

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