Whenever there’s talk of Apple making a big, splashy acquisition to help catch up in AI, someone inevitably points out that “Apple doesn’t acquire big companies like that”. Today, Apple CEO Tim Cook offered his view: company size doesn’t matter.
If the tech is right, what’s the harm?
During today’s Q3 2025 earnings call, Citi analyst Atif Malik asked whether Apple needed to accelerate its AI roadmap, despite historically not resorting to big acquisitions.
Cook noted that Apple has acquired seven companies this year, although not all of them were AI companies. Then, he added:
“We’re very open to M&A that accelerates our roadmap. We’re not stuck on a certain size company. (…) we basically ask ourselves whether a company can help us accelerate a roadmap. If they do, then we are interested. But we don’t have anything to share specifically today.”
Cook’s answer comes about a month after Bloomberg reported that Apple had held internal talks about acquiring AI search startup Perplexity, which reportedly just closed a $1 billion funding round, pegging its value at more than $18 billion, and pushing any potential sale price even higher.
An acquisition would not just make it Apple’s biggest to date, well beyond the $3 billion Beats deal, it could arguably eclipse the combined value of every other acquisition Apple has ever made.
At the same time, Morgan Stanley recently published a report that classified as “misguided” the idea that Apple needed to acquire an AI search startup.
Be it as it may, Cook’s remarks today offered both a different perspective, and a roadmap of companies hoping to break with Apple’s precedent: for this particular case, if the technology is right, Apple may be willing to pay a price as massive as its own shortcomings in the AI game.
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