Apple appears to be sitting out the AI arms race. Will the strategy work?
Unlike many of its Big Tech counterparts, Apple has refrained from spending massive amounts of money on artificial intelligence. Although that strategy has shareholders sweating, analysts in general aren’t worried. In fiscal 2025, Apple allocated $12.72 billion on capital expenditures likely tied to AI. That’s far less than what Alphabet , Meta , Microsoft and Amazon are spending. Capex for these companies ranged from around $30 billion and $125 billion during roughly the same period as technology names tried to secure computing capacity to feed their AI ambitions. However, analysts think Apple doesn’t need to spend so much on AI. That’s due to the existing advantages it has against competitors, including an operating system that is highly integrated across its product lines and a reputation for top-notch privacy services. “Apple’s long‑standing advantages … should continue to be compelling attractions for consumers looking to leverage personal AI Companions,” JPMorgan analyst Samik Chatterjee said Thursday in a note. “Apple [is] positioned to provide leverage of the existing installed base of to share compute beyond the wearables as well as seamless access to a wide breadth of services already being leveraged.” Chatterjee has an overweight rating on Apple. His price target of $325 signals upside of 18.5% from Wednesday’s close. Apple can also afford to lag its peers in the so-called AI race due to its robust hardware vertical – a business that is has accelerated as of late, according to Craig Moffett, co-founder of MoffettNathanson. The company notched 23% year-over-year growth in its smartphone sales for the quarter ended in December amid the rollout of its iPhone 17 product line. “We’re still going to be living in a smartphone dominated world. Apple is a very reliable moneymaker,” Moffett said. To be sure, he has a neutral rating on Apple, and his price target of $270 points to a slight decline. Apple has, however, signaled it will integrate AI into its devices — even if the technology won’t be its own. Most iPhones in use now have sufficient memory and processor power to handle the demands of the emerging technology, according to Moffett. In January, the company inked a deal with Google to power its artificial intelligence features, including a major Siri upgrade expected later this year. Concerns overblown? Moffett noted that concerns over Big Tech giants jockeying to edge out Apple in a so-called AI race are largely overblown, with many companies showing signs of staying in their lanes rather than trying to compete with one another. “It looks like all of these companies were on a collision course with each other, and you were going to have kind of this battle of the giants. [But] two years later, virtually all of that is off the table,” Moffett said. “These companies are right back to their comfortable lanes and they are really not directly competing with each other in anything like the way that it looked like they might.” Apple shares are flat for the year. However, they’ve outpaced other Big Tech names over the past six months. The stock has jumped around 19% in that time, while Nvidia has climbed just under 2%. Meta, meanwhile, has tumbled nearly 13% in the past six months. Amazon has shed more than 9%. AAPL 6M mountain AAPL 6-month chart Analysts are also generally bullish on Apple. Of the 48 who cover the stock, 31 rate it as a buy or strong buy, according to LSEG.
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