Tim Cook says Apple is open to M&A on the AI front (techcrunch.com)

At Apple’s Q4 2025 earnings call, CEO Tim Cook told investors the company remains open to acquisitions and partnerships to accelerate its AI roadmap, while reaffirming that a next‑generation, AI‑powered Siri is still on track for a 2026 release. Cook said Apple will continue a multi‑pronged strategy — building in‑house foundation models, partnering with third‑party LLM providers (notably an existing integration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT), and pursuing M&A where it advances the roadmap. He also signaled more partner announcements are coming. Cook highlighted concrete infrastructure and technical work underpinning that strategy: Apple develops foundation models that can run on devices and via Private Cloud Compute, a privacy‑focused cloud stack that already handles some Siri queries. Apple has begun manufacturing servers in Houston to scale the data‑center side of Apple Intelligence. For the AI/ML community this confirms Apple’s commitment to a privacy‑centric, hybrid on‑device + cloud model, suggests potential talent or capability deals ahead, and sets a clear 2026 milestone for competition in conversational assistants and consumer AI features.