Fast Follower
“Fast Follower” – A cartoon that illustrates how the perception that Apple is a laggard in AI leadership might be about to change.
When Apple bought Siri in 2010, the tech world assumed it had grabbed a permanent lead in consumer AI. Siri arrived with a rare asset, it provided real conversational data from real users, something no other company had at scale. Apple suddenly owned a foundation model’s worth of training signals long before the phrase “foundation model” existed. It was the kind of bold acquisition Apple almost never makes. Traditionally, Apple avoids big purchases, preferring to build internally and step into markets only after rivals have absorbed the chaos of early experimentation.
Arguably, Apple then squandered it. Leadership churned, internal teams drifted, and Siri turned into the joke of the AI assistant category. By the early 2020s, surveys showed over 70% of U.S. consumers believed Siri was behind competitors. The reputational low arrived in late 2025, when Apple agreed to license Google’s 1.2-trillion-parameter Gemini model for a full Siri rebuild, reportedly paying around $1BN per year. For many observers, it looked like Apple conceding defeat.
Yet the long-term story may tilt the other way. Consumer AI ultimately depends on the most intimate data people generate, specifically messages, photos, voice patterns, locations and health signals. Apple’s entire business model is built on keeping that data private and processed locally. Between its custom silicon, its tight integration with Nvidia, and its commitment to running models on-device or inside its sealed Private Cloud Compute, Apple is architected for exactly the kind of personal AI people will actually use. And with Apple forecast to overtake Samsung in smartphone shipments through 2029, it controls the hardware beachhead where consumer AI will live.
In the words of Tim Cook to his employees in August 2025, “the AI revolution is as big or bigger than the internet, smartphones, cloud computing and apps. Apple must do this. Apple will do this. This is sort of ours to grab.”
