Apple takes a bite out of Ontario's Apple?

Apple increases GenAI bets

Apple's apparent plans to invest $1B/year in GenAI seem to continue, with it's latest acquisition of Ontario-based DarwinAI. I am personally very excited with this because if anyone recalls Sheldon Fernandez TMLS talk back in the Covid-19 days on "Covid-Net" (neural network for covid detection), not only was it impressive in the risk stratification realm, but the net was built in just 7 days! (link to talk in the comments)

It is also very exciting that Ontario is getting more sunshine in the AI world, and it will be very exciting to see how Apple's vision meshes with the company.

But what are Apple's intentions with DarwinAI?

It's easy to say that Apple would likely want to leverage the company for improving manufacturing processes or developing more efficient AI systems (hint: LLMs), but the reality is no one knows at this point in time. After all, Apple has acquired ~ 25 AI startups (some say 30) since 2023, so what really is the strategy here? Spray and Pray, or something deeper? It has moved away from the electric car, abandoning a decade-long initiative, so we won't really know the vision for all these resources here till official statements. In the last earnings call, Tim Cook's only note here was "Apple has some things that we're incredibly excited about, that we'll be talking about later this year."

Whatever the vision, my bet is that there is an element that includes iPhone users not having to visit Perplexity, pay $20/mo for premium LLMs, etc. + removing the barriers to entry for non-technical folks into the GenAI world (yes there are still people who have not used ChatGPT). Thoughts anyone?