Forget AI Start-Ups: This Trillion‑Dollar Tech Titan Is Emerging as a Dark Horse in the AI Race

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is an oddball among its large tech peers and ever has been. It has its macOS and iOS operating systems and its App Store, of course, but its absorption has ne'er been connected software.

No, Apple has ever been chiefly a hardware company. The Mac and MacBook computers, iPhone, iPad, and iWatch are its breadstuff and butter.

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Even its closest rival, Microsoft, has ever been much focused connected its Windows operating strategy than making hardware for it to tally on. Perhaps that's wherefore I'm not peculiarly amazed that the iPhone shaper has lagged down its large tech peers successful the improvement of artificial intelligence (AI).

But that is acceptable to alteration successful the adjacent future, and erstwhile it does, I expect Apple, similar Alphabet, volition rapidly outperform AI start-ups similar OpenAI oregon Anthropic owed to its vastly superior resources and almighty brand.

Since its archetypal nationalist offering (IPO) successful 1980, Apple has perennially been 1 of the best-performing stocks connected the market. That's inactive existent now, much than 40 years later. During the past 5 years, it has returned 102% versus the S&P 500's 87%.

The company's latest results showed that it's inactive a juggernaut.

For fiscal 2025 (ended Sept. 27), it recorded gross maturation of 6.4% twelvemonth implicit year, hitting $416 billion. Net income for the twelvemonth grew 19.4% from 2024 to $112 billion. Diluted net per stock (EPS) for 2025 grew 22.6% implicit 2024.

And past for the 2026 fiscal archetypal 4th (ended Dec. 27), gross roseate 16% from a twelvemonth earlier to $143.8 billion, and EPS accrued 19%. Of peculiar enactment was the iPhone, which saw income ascent 23.3% from 2025 and accounted for astir 60% of the company's full sales. In all, the archetypal 4th gross borderline widened by 130 ground points to 48.2% and its operating borderline expanded by 90 ground points to 35.4%.

So, contempt being down successful the AI arms race, Apple is showing nary signs of slowing down. And it has much than capable resources to procure thing it needs -- from endowment to acquiring start-ups -- to jump-start its AI program.

While Apple has yet to genuinely nutrient thing factual successful presumption of AI (the little said astir Apple Intelligence's failed launch, the better), it has been making the close moves precocious to rectify that problem. Late past year, its caput of AI, John Giannandrea, stepped down and was replaced by Amar Subramanya arsenic vice president for AI.