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Apple heads into next week's Worldwide Developers Conference with its stock near record highs, iPhone momentum improving and one unresolved question hanging over Tim Cook's final developer conference as CEO: Can Apple finally deliver the artificial intelligence experience it promised two years ago? The expected centerpiece of WWDC is a major overhaul of Siri, Apple’s long-criticized voice assistant. Analysts expect Apple to show a more powerful version of Siri with a standalone chatbot-style app, personal context, on-screen awareness, the ability to handle multi-step commands and deeper routing to outside models, potentially including Google ’s Gemini. For investors, WWDC is a test of whether Apple Intelligence can become a real iPhone upgrade driver — and justify a valuation that already assumes Apple can remain the device of choice for consumers accessing AI, regardless of which model they use. For developers, it is a test of whether Siri can become a true platform in the agentic era, and one worth building for. And for Cook, it is a legacy moment. As John Ternus prepares to take over for Cook as CEO, WWDC gives the company one last major developer stage to show that Apple's AI strategy is finally coming together. Dan Newman, CEO of The Futurum Group, told CNBC that Apple Intelligence is "one of the big black eyes" of Cook's tenure. "This is clearly the moment that Apple can say, 'Hey, we are capable of taking advantage of our multi-billion-user install base,'" Newman said, adding that Apple also needs to prove to developers that Siri is "something to build on."
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Winning developers and users
MoffettNathanson wrote this week that Apple's stock has "done all the work the AI story has yet to do." The company enters WWDC at an all-time high, with about 36 times trailing earnings and $1.6 trillion more valuable than a year ago. The firm said Apple is executing exceptionally well, with the strongest iPhone cycle in years, China shifting from a structural worry to a share-gain story and services beating again. "The question for WWDC26 isn't 'will Apple announce a better Siri?' It almost certainly will," MoffettNathanson wrote. "The question is 'does a better Siri justify a multiple that already assumes it works?'" MoffettNathanson said Siri has to become credibly agentic for the multiple to hold. That means Siri must move from a command portal into an assistant that can reliably execute multi-step tasks across apps. But that depends on third-party developers making their apps work with App Intents, Apple's system for letting Siri perform actions inside apps. The firm said that creates a "chicken-and-egg problem." Siri only becomes useful if enough developers support it, but developers may wait to see whether consumers actually use it before investing the work. MoffettNathanson noted that Apple has reportedly lined up early App Intents partners, including Uber , Amazon , Temu, YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook, Threads and AllTrails. But it warned that developers may be hesitant to hand more control to Apple after years of tension around App Store economics. That makes WWDC more than a consumer AI demo. Apple has to convince customers that Siri is finally useful, and developers that it can become a platform worth building for. "Cook has totally missed on AI in some ways, but by spending efficiently and not overcommitting to capex and still owning that surface layer, they're actually in a position where they can continue to miss for some time and still, at some point in the future, succeed," Newman said. He added that this is "really the last hurrah" for Cook to spark the inflection point before Ternus takes over.
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The AI investment
While Microsoft , Alphabet, Amazon and Meta spend tens of billions of dollars a year on AI infrastructure, Apple has largely stayed out of the frenzy, betting instead on device-level distribution, privacy and a more model-agnostic approach. That's become a potential advantage for Apple, which could close the AI gap through partnerships instead of taking on the massive data center spending burden facing its Big Tech peers. The Information reported this week that Apple's overhauled Siri is on track for September and will run in part on Google Cloud using Nvidia chips, though CNBC has not independently confirmed those details. That would mark a major shift for Apple, which has long preferred to own core technologies. But investors may tolerate the tradeoff if it gives Apple a faster path to a working AI product. Newman said the partnership could make sense for Google as well, because Apple-scale token usage would give it a major proof point for Gemini and build on a search partnership that has long been lucrative for both companies. There is also a question of whether Apple has underinvested. Stephanie Link, chief investment strategist at Hightower, said Apple has historically been conservative with cash and has preferred buybacks over big acquisitions or heavy investment. She said that discipline has helped margins, but she also finds it frustrating that Apple has not been a bigger participant in a technology shift that rivals describe as once-in-a-generation. Apple has been "ridiculously late on AI," said Dan Niles, founder of Niles Investment Management. Niles gave Cook high marks for supply chain execution and political skill, calling him a "supply chain god.," but noted that its most ambitious recent product launch, the Vision Pro, was a flop. Still, Niles added that he is encouraged by Apple increasing research and development spending, but he sees the next phase of product execution as critical.
Can WWDC move the stock?
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