Apple’s next big AI move might be buying Perplexity, signaling a shift in strategy

Apple's record with AI hasn't been that great. What started off strong with a partnership with OpenAI has yet to really produce much for the iPhone maker.

The company introduced Apple Intelligence last year and said it was going to overhaul its digital assistant Siri by making it smarter and able to understand more tasks. Instead, the feature continues to be delayed, and AI was less of a focus for Apple at its big Worldwide Developers Conference, in contrast to Google’s annual I/O show, where it was all about AI.

It appears, however, Apple might do a workaround by buying one of the up-and-comers in AI, Perplexity AI.

Bloomberg reports on internal talks among Apple executives to potentially bid on Perplexity AI. Adrian Perica, Apple's VP of corporate development, reportedly discussed the idea with Eddy Cue, SVP of Services at the company, as well as other AI decision makers. The report claims that these are early talks, and no offer has been made to Perplexity.

"We have no knowledge of any current or future M&A discussions involving Perplexity,” a company spokesperson said via email.

Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Apple's AI troubles

Buying Perplexity and incorporating the company's AI search into Safari and other services would be a real boon for Apple. Last year, a Google antitrust lawsuit found that the company pays Apple approximately $20 billion to be the default search engine for Safari.

Google Search, however, has been trending downward thanks to the rise of AI models such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's own Gemini, and Perplexity. Data suggests users are moving away from searching for answers on Google and instead using AI to save time and get answers efficiently, rather than having to review multiple pages to find them.

While iPhone users can find a workaround to have their own AI chatbot in the upcoming iOS 26, Apple still hasn't cracked the AI nut with Siri.

Apple reportedly continued to hit one snag after another when developing the smarter Siri. The pitch was for the digital assistant to have a better understanding of natural language and do more complex tasks by making use of data on the phone, such as making a calendar appointment based on a text rather than having to be told to create that appointment.

Apple's initial plan was to release the upgraded Siri in March, but that didn't happen. Instead, there was a leadership reshuffle within the company. Mike Rockwell, the creator of the Vision Pro for the company, ended up replacing John Giannandrea, who was in charge of the team handling the Siri upgrade.

The upcoming release of iOS 26 will incorporate some AI features in the Phone app, such as AI-powered call screening to automatically silence scam calls and voicemail summaries.

These AI features, however, are still far behind what Google is doing. During last month's I/O event, it laid out how Gemini will be integrated into its services, such as Gmail, Google Meet, and even be a key part of its future Android XR smart glasses.