2025-11-19 20:55:03
My god what a colossal waste of time. Here's Cecilia Kang for The New York Times:
Meta did not break the law when it bought its nascent rivals Instagram and WhatsApp, a federal judge said on Tuesday, handing a major win to the $1.51 trillion company and dealing a blow to the government’s efforts to rein in the power of tech giants.
Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia said in an 89-page ruling that Meta did not create a monopoly in social networking through the acquisitions and that the market has continued to expand with rivals including TikTok and YouTube. The Federal Trade Commission had sued the company, accusing it of breaking antitrust law by acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp in a “buy or bury” strategy to cement its social networking dominance.
The F.T.C. “continues to insist that Meta competes with the same old rivals it has for the last decade, that the company holds a monopoly among that small set and that it maintained that monopoly through anticompetitive acquisitions,” Judge Boasberg said, adding that the agency needed to prove that argument. “The court’s verdict today determines that the F.T.C. has not done so.”
This case was so obviously going to fail from the get-go – and actually, it did fail from the get-go, but the judge allowed the FTC to rework it and refile it – that it should call into question the government's judgement and competence in going after any such cases.
Even a recent case in which they "won", against Google in Search dominance, they completely and utterly failed to secure remedies that will change much of anything. And they shouldn't have gotten any such remedies, because that entire premise is fatally flawed in the age of modern technology – and the Age of AI, where things are moving faster still, will only make such issues more obvious.
To put it simply and plainly: the government litigates antitrust in hindsight, but by the time they're able to bring these cases forward to trial, the technology at the center of these debates is already in the rearview mirror, making many of the arguments and debates moot. That was the issue with the Google remedies, and that was the problem with this Meta case. I made the longer version of this argument back in April's Antitrust's Hindsight Problem:
If anything, I suspect these cases – as well as the myriad other antitrust cases against Big Tech™ – will ultimately point to how ineffectual current antitrust law is for our modern age (apologies, Lina Khan). But that will likely only be obvious in hindsight, which is interesting because that itself is a big part of the problem with these cases: that they're being litigated with hindsight...
I mean, that's sort of true about *every such case*. You have to go after what is viewed to be problematic elements of the past, obviously. We don't have Minority Report-style pre-crime – yet. But these Big Tech™ antitrust cases in particular seem to look back upon the past with a different set of glasses than how things were viewed in real time. Nowhere is that more evident than in Meta's ongoing antitrust case. The FTC wants the company to sell-off Instagram and WhatsApp, without really acknowledging that the common consensus at the time – in particular with the former – was that the deals were silly ones in which Facebook, as the company was then known, was drastically overpaying.
Essentially, the government is going after Meta for doing deals that are only deemed savvy and anti-competitive in hindsight. It's sort of the opposite of pre-crime! It's making things crimes in the present that were not crimes in the past.
Worse, had the judge ripped WhatsApp and Instagram away from Meta over a decade after those deals closed, it would have certainly had a chilling effect on basically any deal – in a time when most deals are still mainly frozen because all of these companies still have PTSD in dealing with the wrath of Lina Khan. Again, she was largely ineffectual in action, as we're seeing now with cases playing out after her tenure is over, but the government also made getting deals through such a pain in the ass that it literally wasn't worth the time. Remember when they tried to block Meta from buying a VR fitness app? Yeah...1 Talk about waste of time...
So instead, we saw the rise of "hackqusitions". Deals so convoluted and so clearly set up to get around such nonsense (in many cases, less about the fear of being blocked but the fear of how long such deals would take to get through – basically death in the Age of AI).
Speaking of death, I also might point out that if the government had forced Meta to spin out Instagram, it very well could have killed the company. That sounds like hyperbole, but I'm not sure that it is – by most accounts, Instagram is now the main driver of Meta's all-important ad revenue, more so than Facebook itself. Certainly, it would have ensured that Meta had no shot to compete in AI because they wouldn't have the money to do so. Mark Zuckerberg's case to would-be hires that Meta is better positioned for the long term in AI than, say, OpenAI, because they have the profits to pour back into the projects would have been all-but destroyed.
Hard to debate "buy, build, or bury" when you can't buy, build, or bury...2
So does this mean M&A meat is back on the menu, boys? Maybe, but probably not. Again, "hackquisitions" work so much faster than traditional M&A since they're not subject to, well, much of anything aside from an agreement between two parties. So I wouldn't be shocked to see them continue. Unless the government wakes up to that reality. Which they might... in 2045.
That's around when the government might also realize that Meta's real competition here was TikTok and YouTube, you morons. Any child would know that. I mean that very literally! It took one simple, quick experiment to highlight this fact to the judge in this case, as Casey Newton rightly zeroes in on in writing up the verdict today on Platformer. The government? They were too busy on something called 'MeWe', apparently. Maybe we should look into that. Of course, even those undoubtedly won't be the competition by then because,3 well, see: above.
It's like trying to play Whac-A-Mole where the moles are high on amphetamines.
It's almost as if the government has spent the past 25 years congratulating themselves for the Microsoft antitrust case that they also actually lost in the end, that they're blinded to the reality of how markets actually work in the modern age. And that's really going to screw them in the Age of AI.
With this Meta case, at least we'll always have the discovery documents and testimony here. That was fun, albeit not for Meta. The same will likely be true for Apple and Amazon with their own antitrust cases still making their way to trial. The Apple case in particular also seems awfully weak, so that mixed with the fact that Apple hates to disclose anything about their business (not to mention public embarrassment) might lead to some sort of settlement before that happens. We'll see.
I'll close with my closing from my post about antitrust back in April (a longer excerpt, since it was paywalled):
Now, that is the one part where the government may have a point and a role here. Rather than worrying about the dominance of Google Search, if they were focused on making sure Google doesn't leverage their market position to control the future of AI in an anticompetitive way, that's the correct framing here. And you're starting to hear them talk in such a way. The problem goes back to pre-crime. No one can know for sure that AI will be the key to dominating the future right now. Many believe that, and for good reason, I think. But it's trying to litigate the future.
So yeah, that puts the government in a tricky spot between the past and the future. Still, that future should clearly be the focus versus the past. And so if there's a way to keep an eye on ensuring that a market position isn't leveraged in an anticompetitive way – *while still allowing Google to compete* – that's the angle.
Admittedly, it's a tough needle to thread.
But even without that, it feels like the market is moving in ways right now that are naturally starting to erode what all of these antitrust cases are focused on. The humorously defined social media dominance that Meta enjoys seemingly matters less by the day. And same with Google when it comes to Search. As noted, the ad case against Google is probably the strongest, but it's perhaps also under attack as AI starts to change the way the web actually works – or, at least, is served.
Meanwhile, the cases against Apple and Amazon are yet to begin. But there are already clear issues with the Apple case as well, largely in trying to cram their market position with the iPhone into older antitrust definitions around market dominance. There as well, there's perhaps a case to be made against the App Store in particular as a form of distribution, but it's going to require the DoJ lawyers to yes, think different. About the future, not about the past.
Good luck.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 Shoutout though for successfully torpedoing the Amazon/iRobot deal – though Europe largely gets the credit for that particular one. We almost fell victim to Big Tech owning Big Vacuum! Instead, iRobot is about to die, having had to lay off nearly everyone. What a win for everyone! ↩
2 Here's where I'll again note the irony that TikTok rose to power largely on the back of Meta's ad platform. It allowed Bytedance to turn the acquired startup Musical.ly into the hit product that Vine should have been, had Twitter not so pathetically fumbled that bag! And now TikTok's success effectively saved Meta here. Funny that. ↩
3 It's still not entirely clear that TikTok will even exist next year, let alone in a decade or two, thanks to the continued bungling of the "deal" to sell the service. ↩
2025-11-19 06:04:52
When I was a kid, I distinctly remember the phrase "collect them all" as a marketing slogan used to upsell toys and other collectables. As a completist, this always worked on me – honestly, still does. It also sure seems to work on Big Tech when it comes to AI.
With the news today that Microsoft and NVIDIA are now making investments in Anthropic – naturally alongside a pledge from Anthropic to spend at least $30B on Azure, because you can't have a tit without a tat – I'm honestly sort of at a loss for how to frame this. Everything is just so tangled and interwoven at this point. I mean, this is a company which owns 27% of OpenAI investing in their main rival. And, to be fair, it comes after OpenAI signed deals with all of Microsoft's main rivals in the cloud. So instead, I'll just assume from now on that all bets are off because all bets are on.
Still, I feel the need to list out some of this conflicted mess just for my own sanity and so I can keep referencing and checking it as I write about tangential topics. Really, it's just an expansion of a list I made in July when noting just how hedged Big Tech was now thanks to their massive investments in these AI companies.
This is just the latest such deal, but obviously won't be the last.
Amazon
Investor in: Anthropic • Databricks • Hugging Face • Scale AI
Investment from: N/A
Other deals: OpenAI
AMD
Investor in: Cohere • Hugging Face • Scale AI • Thinking Machine Lab • World Labs
Investment from: OpenAI
Other deals:
Anthropic
Investor in: N/A
Investment from: Amazon • Google • Microsoft • NVIDIA
Other deals: Apple
Apple
Investor in: N/A
Investment from: N/A
Other deals: Anthropic • Google • OpenAI
Cisco
Investor in: Anthropic • Cohere • CoreWeave • Mistral • Scale AI • Thinking Machine Lab
Investment from: N/A
Other deals: Microsoft
CoreWeave
Investor in: N/A
Investment from: Microsoft • NVIDIA
Other deals: OpenAI
Databricks
Investor in: N/A
Investment from: Amazon • Microsoft • NVIDIA • Salesforce
Other deals: Google
Google
Investor in: Anthropic • Hugging Face • Safe Superintelligence
Investment from: N/A
Other deals: Databricks • NVIDIA • OpenAI • Thinking Machine Lab
Hugging Face
Investor in: N/A
Investment from: Amazon • AMD • Google • IBM • Intel • NVIDIA • Salesforce
Other deals:
Intel
Investor in: Hugging Face
Investment from: NVIDIA • SoftBank • US Government
Other deals: Amazon • Google • Microsoft
Meta
Investor in: Databricks • Safe Superintelligence • Scale AI
Investment from: N/A
Other deals: Black Forest Labs • Midjourney • NVIDIA
Microsoft
Investor in: Anthropic • Databricks • Mistral • OpenAI
Investment from: N/A
Other deals: NVIDIA
Mistral
Investor in: N/A
Investment from: ASML • Cisco • IBM • Microsoft • NVIDIA • Salesforce • Samsung
Other deals:
NVIDIA
Investor in: Anthropic • Cohere • CoreWeave • Mistral • Perplexity • OpenAI • Safe Superintelligence • Scale AI • Thinking Machine Lab • xAI
Investment from: SoftBank (just exited)
Other deals: Literally everyone, except maybe Apple
OpenAI
Investor in: AMD
Investment from: Microsoft • NVIDIA • Oracle • SoftBank
Other deals: Almost everyone, except Anthropic, Meta, and xAI
Oracle
Investor in: Ampere • Cohere • OpenAI
Investment from: N/A
Other deals: NVIDIA • SoftBank
Salesforce
Investor in: Anthropic • Cohere • Databricks • Hugging Face • Mistral • World Labs
Investment from: N/A
Other deals:
Scale AI
Investor in: N/A
Investment from: Amazon • AMD • Cisco • Meta • NVIDIA
Deals with:
SoftBank
Investor in: Ampere • Intel • NVIDIA (just exited) • OpenAI
Investment from: N/A
Deals with: Oracle
xAI
Investor in: N/A
Investment from: AMD • NVIDIA
Deals with: Black Forest Labs • Microsoft • Oracle
So there you go, while NVIDIA is obviously out there like Thanos collecting Infinity Stones, others are more subtle in their strategic bets. Special shout-out to Cisco, which kept unexpectedly coming up as I was putting together the list.
It also sure feels like with this latest news we're mere weeks away from Google and/or Amazon investing in OpenAI, completing the ouroboros. Apple? All totally cool, right? Since this isn't "zero sum" per Nadella...1
Anyway, I'm off to play Clue. Or Pokemon.
I can't believe they don't break into a rendition of "Kumbaya" to close...
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 Narrator: as it turns out, it was not "totally cool" in the end, as many of these conflicted sides and companies would fight tooth and nail for market share. ↩
2025-11-18 22:49:57
Tomorrow is once again the big day. Will Jensen Huang see his shadow? NVIDIA's results will determine if utter AI exuberance gets to continue for another few months or, in a reversal with Punxsutawney Phil's model, if AI Winter is coming.
I make this joke every quarter, but it's also more of an acute risk every quarter. NVIDIA famously became the first $5T company in history a few weeks ago. Alongside that milestone, it surpassed accounting for 8% of the S&P 500 – the largest single-stock weight in the history of the index. Increasingly, as goes NVIDIA, so goes the stock market. So yeah, Jensen seeing his shadow is important.
As to if he will or not, there are conflicting signs. By all accounts, AI spend – and in particular, Big Tech CapEx spend – continues to surge. Given just how much of that spend runs directly to and through NVIDIA, it seems almost impossible to believe they could disappoint on earnings. At the same time, the Law of Large Numbers exists in business for a reason. The bigger you are, the harder it is to grow bigger still at the same rate of growth. And, of course, NVIDIA's rate has been falling for a while now.
In the chart below, you can plainly see the brief rise and fast fall of the crypto boomlet and then the utterly insane rise of AI starting in mid-2023.
Again, this chart isn't surprising, it's that Law of Large Numbers at work. If anything, it's insanely impressive that NVIDIA is still seeing growth north of 50% given the scale they're at and the previous year's comps. But at some point, barring some new breakthrough – which obviously is certainly possible and perhaps even plausible in this world! – NVIDIA will fall back to more "normal" rates of quarterly revenue growth. While they're all obviously different businesses (with some overlap), the rest of Big Tech – the largest companies in the world – have yearly growth rates ranging from 8% (Apple) to Meta (26%).
NVIDIA itself is guiding towards around 54% growth this quarter, while Wall Street consensus has them in the 56% to 60% range. The latter would be rather incredible because it would be the first sequential uptick in that growth rate since the end of 2023/early 2024, nearly two full years ago. Regardless, this is undoubtedly going to be the first $50B revenue quarter in the history of the company.
And even if NVIDIA was able to pull off the accelerated growth, the real key, as always, will be what they're guiding towards next quarter (current Wall Street bets are in the 56% growth rate range there as well). And there are a lot of constantly-in-motion pieces there between the shipment of new chips and the China situation (if and when NVIDIA is able to do business in China again, the numbers will clearly surge and should easily beat any estimates since they're no longer accounting for any China sales in their models for the AI chip business, and it used to be a pretty good part of the business!).
There's also new wild cards potentially in play in NVIDIA's quarterly numbers thanks to their increasing number (and increasing in size) stakes in other AI companies – most notably, OpenAI itself. How will they account for the swings in value there? Will their accountants determine that they need to account for some of that startup's sizable losses on their own books as Microsoft does? Presumably not since the stake is still very small (~2%) and only growing to a potentially sizable one over time. So instead they'll have to mark to market which will impact their bottom line (though presumably not yet in a major way beyond a uptick in their previous smaller holding due to the new round of financing). And what about all the other stakes?
Also, what about those two key customers that we so key to last quarter?
Almost all of the above lays out a picture where NVIDIA's business is still booming for the foreseeable future. But that doesn't mean there aren't signs of concern – in the form of a few big bets against them (or no longer for them), in particular.
The biggest of these, of course, is the short position perhaps the most famous short-seller in history, Michael Burry, disclosed a couple weeks ago. To be clear, he's far more short on, and presumably bearish on, Palantir. But still, before he closed up his shop (or at least deregistered it with the SEC), Burry made two final short bets and one of those is on the most valuable company in the world.
Burry followed up with some hints that he's in particular worried about the depreciation schedule that the tech companies are using for their data center assets – the biggest aspect of that is clearly the lifespan of NVIDIA chips. He suggests that this element alone is a form of financial manipulation that helped inflate the current AI bubble.
At the same time, if that's his rationale – or even just a key part of his bubble thesis – why would he short Palantir so heavily versus, say, the "neocloud" companies? Their business models are heavily predicated around this depreciation element. As I wrote in (the paid version of) the newsletter last week:
I'm honestly not quite sure what to make of Michael Burry's move to shutter his fund (or at least deregistering it with the SEC) right after making his short bet on Palantir (and to a lesser extent NVIDIA). His stated reason that the value of securities is not "in sync with the markets" sort of implies he's giving up on the short game because the market is too irrational, and that this may be his swan song bet? But it's almost too obvious of one to make given where Palantir is valued relative to earnings. And ditto with NVIDIA given that it's, well, the most valuable company in the world on the back of AI. Why not short neoclouds or something else if you really believe AI is a bubble? Especially with his follow-up talk about potential nefarious business going on with the way companies are handling depreciation of these chips – this is clearly going to be an issue for someone at some point given how all over the board the timelines are: some 3 years, some 4, some 5, CoreWeave um, 6! And it is interesting that these shifts have happened while NVIDIA has also shifted from a two year release cadence to a one year (which Satya Nadella mentioned almost in passing on The Dwarkesh Podcast this week when talking about why they paused some data center spend earlier this year – yeah...) Anyway, Palantir is all kinds of complicated because of the government contracts if nothing else. And, of course, Burry was just wrong with his infamous last "Sell" tweet. So what's the game afoot here? I guess we'll know more on November 25! Thanksgiving stuffing coming early this year?
But Burry also isn't the only one making a bet here. Or perhaps more accurately, there are others pulling their bets on NVIDIA.
SoftBank made headlines last week with the news that they were selling their entire multi-billion-dollar position in NVIDIA. They were quick to note that this was simply to get cash to be able to fulfill their commitments to fund OpenAI, but it's still a signal against NVIDIA. If SoftBank was super bullish about the company's growth prospects from here – as they clearly are on OpenAI – presumably they would have figured out a way to sell other assets and/or take on more debt to make those payments. It's not stated but certainly implied that they were okay selling their NVIDIA position right now at these prices.
And that's especially eye-opening since one of Masa Son's greatest regrets that he has often talked about in recent years was exiting the NVIDIA stake he previously held. Of course, that's also easy and obvious to say when you had a holding you sold for $4B (in 2019) that had you held would have been worth around $250B these days... Still, it's an interesting signal!
As is the move by Peter Thiel's hedge fund, Thiel Macro, to sell off their entire NVIDIA stake, as Bloomberg reported yesterday. Granted, the stake was "only" worth about $100M, but it was still one of the core holdings of the fund alongside Apple, Microsoft, and Tesla. They're holding on to those other holdings...
Even if the size of the sale wasn't going to move the stock, the news, especially in concert with the other items above, builds a narrative of negativity around NVIDIA at the moment. That might be fair or not (again, Burry's bet seemed more of a throw-in and SoftBank does need the cash), but it's out there.1 A big bear, circling the world's most valuable company...
The reality of the situation remains that while NVIDIA's numbers this quarter (and projections for next quarter) can certainly tank (or boost) the entire stock market given the sheer size and weight of the company, they're unlikely to lead to a full on bubble burst. If their numbers were ever bad enough, they could certainly kickstart such a sell-off (again, vice versa in the other direction if they're good enough), but bubbles are built on the back of irrationality.
I might argue that this particular bubble, the AI Bubble, is actually more rational than previous bubbles (and certainly the players involved are making that case). But that doesn't mean it's any less of a bubble. And bubbles always end. And that ending is even more likely to be for an irrational reason. That is, fear.
If and when something triggers a sell-off, what continues to fuel it won't be NVIDIA's numbers, it will be panic that the whole game is up and that the bets are now literally off. And that will feed back into the system, causing money to pull back which in turn will give companies less money to spend, which in turn will send less money to NVIDIA. And they'll be hit extra hard because of how entangled they are in the whole ecosystem at the moment.
I'm not saying this is about to happen. But I'm saying it will happen, at some point. Let's see if we see that shadow...
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 It's more tangential, but I might also just note the disclosure revealing Berkshire Hathaway's large new position in Alphabet (now they're 10th largest holding). That's not necessarily a bet against NVIDIA, but you certainly might view it as a bet on Google being one of the key victors of the AI race. And if that's true, a large part of it will likely be the success of their TPU chips vs. NVIDIA's chips... ↩
2025-11-18 03:18:21
Sometimes, things come in waves. Like in 1997 when we got not one, but two disaster movies about volcanoes in Dante's Peak and yes, Volcano. Or the following year when we got two movies about asteroids coming to destroy the world in Armageddon and Deep Impact. Now we seem to be having such a moment around the formation of companies to build "World Models" it seems.
Just last week, I wrote about the notion that Meta may soon find themselves in a battle with their (soon to be) former Chief AI Scientist if and when Yann LeCun breaks away to form a new startup focused on building World Models. I noted in passing that there were a number of other startups already working in the general space, but then came news today that another name is entering the arena, and it's a big one; an asteroid, as it were: Jeff Bezos.
2025-11-17 19:57:08
For the past several months, there's been a steady drumbeat of Apple not just shifting to a more fluid "year round" iPhone launch strategy, but word that it would start in 2026. There's enough reporting on the matter from various sources now that it seems to be happening:
In recent years, including 2025, Apple has released four main iPhones — two Pro models and two mid-tier versions — in the fall. And it occasionally debuted a lower-cost SE or “e” model in the early part of the year. But in 2026 and beyond, the company’s smartphone release schedule will look markedly different.
Apple plans to unveil three high-end models — the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max and a new foldable — in fall 2026. Then, roughly six months later, it will roll out the iPhone 18, iPhone 18e and potentially a refreshed iPhone Air. I expect this pattern to continue for years to come, with Apple launching between five and six new models annually.
The shift to "Premium" models in the Fall, followed by "Regular" models in the Spring is in line with the earlier Wayne Ma report for The Information. As I wrote at the time in May, this is both a massive change, but also seemingly makes some sense:
This would be a massive shift in strategy. Releasing the more premium models of the iPhone before the "regular" models would clearly shift the lineup more towards the former in terms of sales. But it would probably also help the lineup overall in allowing Apple to be constantly shipping new devices at different price points. And it would shift the hardware back to a state more in-step with software, as iOS is increasingly now released year-round, versus all-at-once in the fall.
This is the old tried and true "if you really care about the latest and greatest, pay up" model. But it also has the side benefit of perhaps allowing Apple to stagger production a bit more, which in turn could help diversify production a bit more – as in, to other countries outside of China for the latest models.
But with the more recent news that the iPhone Air may be "delayed" to be on the Spring schedule next year as well (more on this in a minute), I'm now wondering if this won't be too large of a change for Apple when it comes to consumer expectations. That is, every year, for nearly two decades now, everyone is well aware that new iPhones are launched in the Fall. And while many such people who buy in the Fall buy the Pro models, many others do not, opting for the more affordable "regular" variety. In fact, it hardly seems a stretch to think that those less in the know about Apple rumors and shipping schedules are more likely to go with those "regular" models. And so next year, that customer may head to the Apple Store thinking they're going to get a new iPhone 18, only to find that, sorry, only the iPhone 18 Pro and Fold models are available. And those are far more expensive than what they're used to buying.
To be fair, that same customer may be okay going with last year's iPhone 17 model, but it won't be a new iPhone model. And that also raises the question if Apple still plans to drop the price of last year's models by $100 with the Fall releases or if they'll do that now as well in the Spring alongside the new "regular" models? That would be a pretty raw deal for my hypothetical customer.
With all that in mind, I've been wondering why Apple doesn't do a more balanced option along the lines of:
Fall 2026:
Spring 2027:
But again, all of this reporting suggests Apple is already locked in with the "Premium" Fall and "Regular" Spring cadence, at least for the coming year. Maybe they could do the above in '27/'28, or maybe my worries above won't matter. It's just such a big change to the way Apple has sold (and marketed) the iPhone to date that there's obviously real risk with such a change. Of course, Apple has a lot of such changes coming to the lineup.
Regarding the iPhone Air in particular, back to Gurman:
The Information reported that a second-generation iPhone Air had been postponed from next fall into 2027 in order to add a second rear camera (and that a vapor chamber and beefier battery are in the cards). The news outlet also cited poor sales as a cause for the schedule change.
But from what I’ve heard, the second-generation iPhone Air hadn’t actually been earmarked for next year — at least not in recent months. So this wasn’t a delay due to the phone’s sales performance. The fact that Apple named the device the iPhone Air (rather than the iPhone 17 Air) signaled that it didn’t want to tie the product to an annual release schedule.
Here's where I'll point out something sort of humorous, as I wrote about that same Information report last week:
It will be interesting if Apple attempts to push back on this report at all – perhaps on background to other publications? Maybe there will be some casual comment that the device was never meant to be on a yearly cadence? They could even point to the fact that it was called the 'iPhone Air' and not the 'iPhone 17 Air' – which led to immediate speculation that it wouldn't be on a yearly release cycle.
Now I'm not saying that Apple officially fed this to Gurman – if anything, he's constantly on their shit list for breaking so many stories about the company – but I am saying that someone at Apple (his source) likely did with regard to that narrative which I correctly guessed. And that doesn't mean it's misdirection, of course. In fact, it's exactly in line with what I speculated when the 'iPhone Air' name was officially unveiled:
The worst kept secret in Cupertino (this year) is here: iPhone Air. Notably, it's not 'iPhone 17 Air', just 'iPhone Air' which stands out in the line up with iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro. And it leads to the obvious question if Apple views this as a one-off design, perhaps if it doesn't sell well? That seems unlikely, so perhaps they'd just do an 'iPhone Air 2' next year? But that would be a bit awkward and confusing if they stick with the standard naming schemes for the other iPhones – i.e. do I buy an iPhone 18, an iPhone 18 Pro, or an iPhone Air 2 next year? Then again, next year should also see the 'iPhone Fold' introduced, so perhaps we're slowly moving away from the bigger numbers, which were always untenable at some point. Were we really going to get an 'iPhone 37' in 2045?
I certainly think it's fair and interesting to wonder if Apple did choose that name to give them such optionality here. Perhaps they never intended to release an Air every year, but maybe they would have, had it been a huge hit. Which it's clearly not out of the gate.
Anyway, Gurman's sources suggest the big change with the 'iPhone Air 2' may be less about another camera lens and more about a move to the 2nm process for the chip, which Apple is expected to shift to next year and yes, should help with battery life – something, of course, where the iPhone Air has a more acute need.
He also suggests that the real driver behind doing the Air was building up some expertise and production capabilities ahead of the 'iPhone Fold' – a notion I've written about before as well. Still, it's almost impossible to imagine Apple would release a product they thought would be a dud just to gear up for another product (one which, I may add, also may have sales challenges based on the likely price points).
Then again, they did release the Vision Pro...
One more thing: the most interesting element of Gurman's latest newsletter may not be any of the above (which again, was already largely known/reported), but instead that Apple may be killing off the Mac Pro. For whatever reason, Apple has had some real commitment issues when it comes to that device in the past many years. But they keep coming back to it, promising this time will be different. Before they go back to neglecting it. Now the success of the Mac Studio may have been the final death blow... Many professionals – true professionals who needed the tower and all its extensibility (or as much as Apple would allow anyway) – will not be happy.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
2025-11-16 23:43:12
Two weeks ago, Tim Cook turned 65. Technically, he has two years to go until "retirement age" for his cohort of workers in the US, but I'm not sure how much Cook needs to ensure his full social security payouts at this point. Undoubtedly far more important for his would-be exit from Apple is timing.
To that end, here is some reporting from Tim Bradshaw, Stephen Morris and Michael Acton, and Daniel Thomas for the FT:
Apple is stepping up its succession planning efforts, as it prepares for Tim Cook to step down as chief executive as soon as next year.
Several people familiar with discussions inside the tech group told the Financial Times that its board and senior executives have recently intensified preparations for Cook to hand over the reins at the $4tn company after more than 14 years.
The fact that there are four reporters bylined on this 330-word post suggests that this is more than just idle speculation based on some loose chatter and more that this is a potential trial balloon on the idea that at least some people "in the know" are floating out there...
That doesn't mean it will happen, of course. Ultimately, the decision is Cook's. While there had been some speculation over the past year that perhaps he would get nudged out the door, that talk quieted quickly when Apple's stock came roaring back to life on the back of some better-than-expected earnings (not to mention some inkling that perhaps Apple isn't in such a bad position to have largely missed the AI boat to date – certainly from a cost perspective!). As the story notes, Cook took Apple from a $350B company at the time he took over for Steve Jobs to a $4T company – a full order of magnitude leap from an already insane base.
Perhaps the only chief executive with a better run is Cook's counterpart Satya Nadella, who not only took Microsoft from around a $280B market cap to also hitting that $4T mark (well before Apple, though they've since slid back a bit), but also had to take over a company in need of an actual change in direction after a lost decade under Steve Ballmer. Cook, of course, just needed to execute on the vision Jobs laid out – and he was the person best suited for that task perhaps in the entire world.
"Just" obviously undersells Cook. He's actually been CEO of Apple longer than Steve Jobs ever was (people forget that Jobs was not the CEO during the early years of Apple through when he was infamously ousted – his actual CEO tenure, including his "iCEO" time, started in 1997 and ended when he handed the reins to Cook in 2011). And much of the past several years have seen Cook execute upon strategies that went far beyond what Jobs may have envisioned, in particular with Services. Which is now gunning for the iPhone business itself in terms of size and importance to Apple.
My point is that no one (with any actual power or sway) is telling Cook to leave. I don't care how embarrassing Apple's AI miss has been. But this is also perhaps a unique moment in time for him to leave, if he wanted to.
Beyond the aforementioned stock price being right back at all-time highs, with a market cap second only to NVIDIA now, Cook seems on the cusp of delivering a "blockbuster" holiday quarter, which will likely be reflected when Apple reports their next quarterly earnings in late January. Apple previewed as much in their last earnings report, which is why the stock is back to where it is after under-performing the rest of Big Tech for the past couple of years (yes, in part thanks to the AI issues but also the tariff/China issues). When thinking about legacy, as anyone in Cook's position after his long tenure now must, certainly there's a desire to go out "on top". And there may be no better time than after that next earnings release.
The company is unlikely to name a new CEO before its next earnings report in late January, which covers the critical holiday period.
An announcement early in the year would give its new leadership team time to settle in ahead of its big annual keynote events, its developer conference in June and its iPhone launch in September, the people said.
Again, the FT reports that "although preparations have intensified, the timing of any announcement could change". And this could just be a matter of teeing it up for Cook if he decides he wants to make the move after thinking about it, say, over the holidays. And the key part of that will obviously be having the succession plan in place. Which it sure seems to be:
John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice-president of hardware engineering, is widely seen as Cook’s most likely successor, although no final decisions have been made, these people said.
This, of course, backs up the reporting Mark Gurman put out there for Bloomberg last year about Ternus likely being "the chosen one". This was somewhat of a surprise at the time because Jeff Williams held the all-important COO title that Cook held before his elevation. But Williams is only slightly younger than Cook and sure enough, earlier this year, Williams announced his own retirement – something which just formally took place last week. That sure seemed to set the stage for the 15-years-younger-than-Cook Ternus...
And Ternus also seems well placed given the fact that while he's younger than most of Apple's other senior leaders, his tenure at the company is still impressive: he'll mark 24 years at the company next May – nearly half his life has been spent at Apple. And that's something which clearly matters to Apple. And the fact that he's been overseeing hardware for many years now also makes him seem particularly well-suited to take over now. Again, with the AI work in flux, it feels like Apple's answer has been to double-down on their strengths, the biggest of which is something else no other company can seemingly match: hardware. Ternus feels like the right guy for the right time in Apple's history.
At the same time, it's also a company clearly in need of some changes as has been showcased so overtly in public by the AI situation. The cultural changes seemingly needed to be able to execute in the Age of AI are the main reason I might argue for Apple to do some major M&A – i.e. it would be less about the tech than the talent and the shift in mindset. But perhaps a "simple" change at the top of Apple will be enough to change things. That plus the fact that many of those other top lieutenants will undoubtedly be retiring soon alongside Cook and Williams.
Might one of Ternus' first moves be to significantly change the App Store rules? Wishful thinking? Probably. But it could be an Microsoft Office-for-iPad-like moment, which Nadella quickly executed to signal change, if nothing else?
Cook has voiced his preference for an internal candidate to be chosen as his replacement, saying the company has “very detailed succession plans”.
“I love it there and I can’t envision my life without being there so I’ll be there a while,” he told singer Dua Lipa on her podcast in November 2023.
Aside from going to Dua Lipa for my Apple news, I also often turn to John Gruber, who notes that while Cook may retire from the CEO role, that doesn't mean he has to fully leave the company (a notion I've put out there before as well)1:
I would also bet that Cook moves into the role of executive chairman, and will still play a significant, if not leading, role for the company when it comes to domestic and international politics. Especially with regard to Trump.
I would just note that the only (loose) retirement policy Apple has in place is for board directors, who typically step down by the time they're 75. That would give Cook another solid decade of being involved, if he chooses. And the company would probably be wise to choose that for at least the next several years for the Trump and China angles, if nothing else, as Gruber notes. Wouldn't it be nice to usher in Ternus and not have him have to worry about delivering golden trinkets to Trump on day one? Ideally, he wouldn't have to deal with any of that nonsense, Cook could still do it. That feels like a very Cook maneuver too – being willing to take that bullet for Apple, as it were.
So yeah, it's pretty clear that Cook is going to retire soon and it's just a question of when. And while he might have liked to wait to get one more product – in particular, the Smart Glasses, which other reports had him very focused on – out the door, he also has to be considering the macro picture. Not only do things look nice and stable for Apple now, but there are potentially storm clouds on the horizon with AI bubbles and what not. If the stock market were to tank – for any reason, independent of Apple – Cook might have a harder time leaving.
I mean, just look at what happened to Disney when Bob Iger left, handing over the reins to Bob Chapek just as COVID was hitting...2 Things got so bad that Iger had to come back! And now he's trying to get it right this time, leaving in early 2026...
One more thing: for what it's worth, the aforementioned Gurman noted that "I don’t get the sense anything is imminent" around Cook retiring. But for as good as Gurman's sources are within Apple, this one is very likely a need-to-know situation. And anyone with such info might be willing to let it be known in a targeted way so there's not a market shock when it happens...
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 I would also note that another company where the CEO stepped into the executive chair role is Nike, where Cook is on the board. Mark Parker executed that move before John Donahoe – someone Cook helped directly recruit – stepped in (though that didn't turn out so well)... ↩
2 Iger also stepped off the board of Apple a year before leaving his Disney post the first time... ↩
