Apple could bolster AI with acquisitions, according to Tim Cook

Back at its Worldwide Developer Conference in 2024, Apple announced its take on artificial intelligence, called Apple Intelligence.

Apple Intelligence started to arrive on compatible devices towards the end of 2024 with features like Writing Tools to help summarise, proofread and rephrase text, and Clean Up for removing unwanted objects or people from the background of photos.

There are plenty more features that come with Apple Intelligence of course, but while a more contextually aware Siri was one of the main features that was announced in 2024, it has not arrived on devices as yet.

What's Apple said in its latest earnings call?

Now there's talk Apple is open to acquiring a company, or companies, that would enable it to speed up its advancement in the AI field. According to a report on 9to5Mac, during the Q3 2025 earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook said, "We’re very open to M&A that accelerates our roadmap. We’re not stuck on a certain size company."

He also said: "We basically ask ourselves whether a company can help us accelerate a roadmap. If they do, then we are interested. But we don’t have anything to share specifically today."

The answer was in response to a question asked by Citi analyst Atif Malik who had reportedly enquired if Apple needed to move faster on its AI roadmap despite not traditionally acquiring larger companies.

It has previously been reported by Bloomberg that Apple has held internal talks about acquiring AI search startup Perplexity. This AI company is featured on devices like the Motorola Razr 60 Ultra and its said to be valued at more than $18 billion.

To date, Apple's biggest acquisition has been Beats in 2014 for $3 billion so while Apple has acquired seven companies this year already, it's possible that the next one could be huge. As Cook said though, the company has nothing to share specifically as yet, so we will have to wait and see what happens for now.