Tim Cook Says Apple Could Buy An AI Company To Boost Apple Intelligence

During Apple's earnings call for the third quarter this week, the company's CEO Tim Cook revealed that Apple might acquire an AI company to boost its Apple Intelligence platform. Previous reports suggested the company could be eyeing Perplexity as the perfect partner.

Compared to other major players, Perplexity AI would be the most reasonable platform to acquire. While it would likely mark the biggest acquisition Apple has ever made, as it's currently valued at $18 billion, it could make sense, as the company has struggled to keep up with the competition due to major delays plaguing Apple Intelligence and Siri.

Interestingly enough, Beats has been Apple's best investment to date, as it paid $3 billion for the audio company back in 2014. Still, Tim Cook says the company continues to strongly invest in AI as Apple sees it as "one of the most profound technologies of our lifetime." To CNBC, Tim Cook said "We are significantly growing our investments. We're embedding it across our devices, across our platforms, and across the company."

Unlike some of its most notable competitors, Apple hasn't made any ground-breaking acquisitions in the past year. That said, Tim Cook did note that Apple has scooped up "around" seven companies so far in 2025, but none had been "huge in terms of dollar amount." For instance, in late May, Digital Trends reported that Apple had acquired the video game studio RAC7.

Apple's CEO also said the company is "open to M&A (mergers and acquisitions) that accelerates our roadmap." Considering how sluggish the output has been in recent years, and the number of promising projects that have been scrapped, this isn't especially surprising to hear. It's also worth noting that just because Apple acquires a company, it doesn't mean end users will see a change right away.

For example, it took Apple a couple of years to integrate Dark Sky into the Weather app. More recently, the company purchased Pixelmator, and so far it's keeping the app as is, as it just added Apple Intelligence support for the editor. That being said, even if Apple acquired Perplexity AI today, we would likely still be at least a year away from seeing major changes on the Apple Intelligence platform.