Apple’s take on the artificial intelligence craze that is sweeping the tech industry is aptly named Apple Intelligence. While not something that will make users buy iPhones in and of itself, it has brought many an AI feature to the iPhone franchise, in partnership with the world’s most established names in the field.
Apple is cooperating with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, for instance, to bring a more people-friendly Siri to the iPhone 15 Pro and above users which you can, well, actually chat with. The partnership with ChatGPT has already been under data sharing scrutiny, and Apple now wants to stake a claim in ChatGPT’s future by investing in OpenAI.
According to the Wall Street Journal‘s sources, Apple and NVIDIA will be throwing their weight behind OpenAI’s next funding round. Microsoft already invested $13 billion in OpenAI back in 2019, and now holds a 49% stake in the company’s future profits.
This next funding round is expected to price OpenAI at close to $100 billion, the largest valuation of a pure artificial intelligence play to date. Apple apparently intends to tie its AI efforts to ChatGPT for the long run, and build on the Siri assistant expansion, proofreading, and emoji creation that it helps it offer for a start.
NVIDIA, on the other hand, is also in it for the long haul, as its AI chips have propelled it to the world’s most valuable company status ever since ChatGPT uttered its first generative words, much to the chagrin of teachers worldwide.
It is not clear how much does Apple plan to invest in OpenAI, as the talks are still ongoing, but the iPhone 16 unveiling on September 9 should give a clearer idea how much focus it will place on the AI features of the devices in general, and on the ChatGPT-assisted ones in particular.