For much of the past year, Apple (AAPL) has been in the hot seat on Wall Street for its lack of any significant movement on its AI rollout.
Sure, the company released Apple Intelligence, but the behind-the-scenes drama of AI experts coming and going and delays to its upgraded version of Siri left the company’s stock price lagging behind its Big Tech peers from roughly May through September 2025.
But Apple’s biggest weakness for a large chunk of 2025 is becoming a strength in the early weeks of 2026 as convulsions rock the AI trade.
As of Friday afternoon, Apple stock was up 5.9% over the past month. Microsoft (MSFT) was down 13%, Google (GOOG, GOOGL) off 2.9%, and Amazon (AMZN) down 9.6%. Meta (META) is the outlier, with gains of 8.3%.
Part of the reason for Apple’s slight beat on stock price versus its peers is that the company isn’t pouring tens of billions of dollars into the Great Data Center Build-Out. During their most recent earnings calls, Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft said their capital expenditures for 2026 would collectively total upwards of $665 billion.
![[US, Mexico & Canada customers only] Feb 8, 2026; Santa Clara, CA, USA; Apple CEO Tim Cook on the field before Super Bowl LX between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mike Blake/Reuters via Imagn Images](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==)
Bloomberg consensus estimates indicate Apple will spend just $13.5 billion in 2026, a slight increase from the $12.7 billion it spent in 2025.
Apple will roll out more AI features this year as part of its Siri overhaul, but according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, those will come in separate updates rather than a single release due to yet more delays.
In the meantime, however, Apple’s iPhone 17 line is blowing past Wall Street’s expectations. In its latest quarter, Apple reported iPhone revenue at an all-time record of $85.3 billion. That was well ahead of the $78.3 billion analysts were anticipating and far more than the $69.1 billion in the same quarter last year.
For all the hand-wringing on Wall Street about Apple facing an uncertain future without high-powered AI in its devices, iPhone shoppers seem unbothered.
The company will eventually have to bring advanced AI capabilities to its devices as the technology becomes necessary for various apps and services in the coming years, but we’re not quite there yet.
Instead, Apple shoppers appear to still care more about new designs, better batteries and cameras, and improved screens — all hardware-based features.
While Apple isn’t being penalized on the Street over its AI plans at the moment, the AI explosion is still set to hurt Apple in the coming quarters.
Like every computer hardware company on the planet, Apple is facing a memory crunch that CEO Tim Cook said will pressure margins on iPhone sales in the coming quarters.
