Apple has already started working on its next big iOS update for next year. iOS 18 is slated to be equipped with deep generative AI, which will be integrated throughout the platform. According to Mark Gurman, Apple employees were taken aback by the sudden rise of generative AI as competitors released their own iteration of the technology. Apple claims it has been working on the technology for years but failed to bring forward-facing features to the mix. Now, the company is planning to invest a hefty amount in AI servers for generative AI training.
Apple is investing heavily in AI servers as it plans to introduce generative AI technology next year with iOS 18
It is now being reported by industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo that Apple plans to invest heavily in AI servers next year as it works to introduce generative AI technology in iOS 18. Kuo anticipates that Apple has spent at least $620 million on AI servers this year but does not plan to stop. The company is planning to spread out the AI servers further to bolster its generative AI endeavors.
According to Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple will spend almost $4.75 billion on AI servers next year, allowing the company to carry out its generative AI-centric tasks. This is not the first time that we have heard details about Apple's AI servers. Mark Gurman from Bloomberg claims that Apple has to spend billions in order to compete better against the likes of Microsoft and Google. Both of these companies have been heavily invested in generative AI and using the technology in their latest offerings.
Microsoft has invested $10 billion in OpenAI's ChatGPT platform, which is a large language model capable of understanding contextual tasks and generating ideas. The company has even released an official app for iOS and Android in the past months that broke records. On the other hand, Google is working on Bard, its large language model that uses generative AI technology and works similarly to ChatGPT. However, Google has various tools at its disposal that could make use of the technology, such as Google Assistant. The company implemented most of the features in its latest Android 14 and Pixel 8 series.
According to Kuo, Apple could buy 2,000 to 3,000 servers this year, which is a decent start. Next year, the company will ramp up its efforts and purchase as many as 20,000 servers. Further speculations from the analyst suggest that Apple's AI servers will use Nvidia's HGX H100 8-GPU to train generative AI. Next year, the company could switch from H100 to B100 to further enhance the process. Ultimately, the company can develop its custom server chips to save costs, as each H100 costs around $250,000.
Apple will have to ramp up its generative AI efforts if it wants to compete against the likes of Microsoft and Google. This also means that the company would have to spend billions more to reach the level of the existing contenders. While it is unclear if the company has been working on generative AI technology for years, now might be the right time to do so.
