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Apple

Apple is a US technology company founded in 1976 that makes the iPhone, iPad and Mac. It introduced Apple Intelligence in 2024, builds its own Apple Foundation Models, and in 2026 agreed to build its next models with Google.

Founded 1976Website apple.com Era First AI winter

2026 · 4 19932026
Events per year
7Models & products14Events2People

What it is

Apple Inc. is a US technology company headquartered at Apple Park in Cupertino, California. It was founded on 1 April 1976 in Los Altos, California, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. It was incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc. on 3 January 1977.[1]

Apple's market value has been a recurring measure of its size. It was the first US public company to pass $1 trillion, in 2018, and it passed $2 trillion on 19 August 2020. As of October 2025 it was valued at just over $4 trillion.[1]

Origins in AI

Apple introduced the Siri assistant with the iPhone 4S in October 2011.[1] Its first dedicated Neural Engine, a processor block for machine learning, shipped in the A11 Bionic chip with the iPhone 8 and iPhone X in 2017.[2]

Apple announced Apple Intelligence, its generative AI system built into iOS, iPadOS and macOS, at WWDC on 10 June 2024. Apple said that many models run on the device, and that larger requests go to Private Cloud Compute, a set of Apple silicon servers.[3]

Main features of its AI work

Apple's own model line is called Apple Foundation Models (AFM). The 2024 generation included an on-device model of about 3 billion parameters and a server model.[2] A second generation followed in June 2025, and a third generation, AFM 3, was introduced in June 2026.[2][6]

Apple released the OpenELM family of small open language models in April 2024.[2]

AFM 3 was custom-built in collaboration with Google. Its most capable model, AFM 3 Cloud Pro, runs on NVIDIA GPUs in Google Cloud under an extended Private Cloud Compute.[6] On 12 January 2026 Apple and Google announced a multi-year collaboration in which Google's Gemini models and cloud technology would underpin Apple's next-generation foundation models.[5]

Leadership and place in development

On 1 December 2025 Apple announced that John Giannandrea, senior vice president for Machine Learning and AI Strategy, would step down and retire in spring 2026. Amar Subramanya, formerly of Microsoft and Google's Gemini team, joined as vice president of AI, reporting to Craig Federighi.[4]

On 1 September 2026 John Ternus succeeded Tim Cook as chief executive officer, and Cook became executive chairman.[1]

Apple's own model line therefore now sits alongside the collaboration with Google on its next generation of foundation models.[5][6]

TechniquesFoundation models

ApplicationsConsumer apps

Ecosystem & regionHardware & compute

Governance & standardsSafety & governance

20264

  1. PolicyApple requires 18+ ratings for dating and AI companion apps

    On 2 November 2026 Apple told developers that apps with dating or romantic features, including AI companion apps, must carry an 18+ rating, with new content descriptors required from 16 November.

  2. ReleaseMeta releases the open-weight Muse Spark Open

    On 15 October 2026 Meta released Muse Spark Open, an open-weight, natively multimodal model with 816 billion total parameters, optimised to run on Apple's Mac Studio. Its weights were published on Hugging Face.

  3. ReleaseApple introduces AFM 3 and Siri AI at WWDC 2026

    On 8 June 2026, at WWDC, Apple introduced AFM 3, its third generation of foundation models, and Siri AI, a more personal assistant for iOS 27. Developer testing began the same day, and the launch was limited in the EU and China.

  4. PartnershipApple and Google announce Gemini-based collaboration for Apple's foundation models

    On 12 January 2026 Apple and Google announced a multi-year collaboration in which Google's Gemini models and cloud technology would underpin Apple's next generation of foundation models, while Apple said its privacy standards would stay unchanged.

20251

  1. ReleaseApple opens its on-device model to developers with second-generation foundation models

    On 9 June 2025, at WWDC, Apple introduced its second-generation foundation models and opened the on-device model to third-party apps through the Foundation Models framework, which shipped with iOS 26 in September.

20244

  1. UpdateFirst Apple Intelligence features ship in iOS 18.1

    On 28 October 2024 Apple released the first Apple Intelligence features as a free update to iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1 and macOS Sequoia 15.1. They brought writing tools, a more capable Siri and photo search to supported devices.

  2. PaperApple publishes the technical report on its Apple Intelligence foundation models

    On 29 July 2024 Apple posted its technical report on the Apple Intelligence foundation models to arXiv, with the training hardware, data scale and privacy claims that the June overview had not covered in detail.

  3. ReleaseApple announces Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2024

    On 10 June 2024, at WWDC, Apple announced Apple Intelligence for iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS Sequoia. It introduced Private Cloud Compute and a free ChatGPT integration powered by GPT-4o.

  4. ReleaseApple releases the OpenELM open language models

    On 22 April 2024 Apple researchers posted the OpenELM paper to arXiv and released eight small language models, with training logs, checkpoints, configurations and code for running the models on Apple devices.

20112

  1. ReleaseWolfram Alpha lets Siri answer product-shopping questions

    In December 2011, Wolfram Alpha began answering product-shopping questions for Siri users, querying Best Buy's catalogue of 35,000 consumer products so an iPhone assistant could return prices, features and comparisons from a spoken request.

  2. ReleaseSiri launches on the iPhone 4S

    On 14 October 2011 Apple released the iPhone 4S with Siri built in, turning a research project born at SRI International and shaped by a DARPA program into a conversational assistant on ordinary phones.

20101

  1. AcquisitionApple acquires Siri

    In April 2010 Apple bought Siri, a San Jose start-up whose app answered spoken requests on the iPhone; the deal, reported by The New York Times, put voice-driven assistance on the path to becoming a built-in phone feature.

19932

  1. ReleaseApple ships the Newton MessagePad

    On August 2, 1993, Apple shipped the Newton MessagePad, the first product built on its Newton technology and the company's first handheld computing device. Its troubled launch contributed to John Sculley's replacement as CEO by Michael Spindler.

  2. ReleaseApple licenses ParaGraph cursive handwriting recognition for Newton

    In June 1993, Apple's Personal Interactive Electronics division signed an agreement with ParaGraph International to use ParaGraph's cursive handwriting recognition technology in the Newton family, with further development planned at ParaGraph's Sunnyvale facility.

Models and products over time

7
  1. 1993
    • Aug 2, 1993 Newton MessagePad Product

      The Newton MessagePad was Apple's first handheld computer built on Newton technology, shipping on 2 August 1993 with a pen-based interface, handwriting recognition and a modular communications design.

  2. 2017
    • Sep 12, 2017 Apple A11 Bionic Chip

      Apple's 2017 smartphone chip, announced with the iPhone X: a six-core CPU, an Apple-designed three-core GPU and a dual-core neural engine built for on-device machine learning such as Face ID.

  3. 2024
    • Apr 22, 2024 OpenELM Model

      OpenELM is a family of small open language models from Apple, published in four sizes from 270M to 3B parameters with its training framework, logs, checkpoints and MLX conversion code.

    • Jun 10, 2024 Apple Intelligence Product

      Apple Intelligence is Apple's personal-intelligence system, announced at WWDC on 10 June 2024 for iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS Sequoia. It runs models on device and uses Private Cloud Compute for larger requests.

    • Jun 10, 2024 Apple Foundation Models (AFM, 2024) Model

      Apple Foundation Models (AFM, 2024) are the first generation of the models behind Apple Intelligence: a roughly 3-billion-parameter on-device model and a larger server model that runs in Private Cloud Compute.

  4. 2025
    • Jun 9, 2025 Apple Foundation Models (2025) Model

      Apple Foundation Models (2025) are the second generation of Apple's models. They add image understanding and a mixture-of-experts server design, and they open an on-device model to developers through the Foundation Models framework.

  5. 2026
    • Jun 8, 2026 Apple Foundation Models 3 (AFM 3) Model

      Apple Foundation Models 3 (AFM 3), published on 8 June 2026, is a family of five models: two on-device models, including a sparse 20B multimodal model, and three cloud models, one of which is optimised for NVIDIA GPUs.

People2

Kai-Fu Lee1990–1996Ian Goodfellow2019–2022

Notes and sources

  1. Apple Inc.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.
  2. Apple Intelligencehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Intelligence
  3. Introducing Apple Intelligence for iPhone, iPad, and Machttps://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/06/introducing-apple-intelligence-for-iphone-ipad-and-mac/
  4. John Giannandrea to retire from Applehttps://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/12/john-giannandrea-to-retire-from-apple/
  5. Joint statement from Google and Applehttps://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/company-announcements/joint-statement-google-apple/
  6. Introducing the Third Generation of Apple's Foundation Modelshttps://machinelearning.apple.com/research/introducing-third-generation-of-apple-foundation-models

Cite this page: Apple. TellWorld, https://www.tellworld.net/companies/apple. Updated 2026-11-08