CFRA, an independent research provider, has provided MT Newswires with the following research alert. Analysts at CFRA have summarized their opinion as follows:
According to an unconfirmed Bloomberg report, AAPL and Alphabet (GOOGL 141 ****) are in talks that would allow AAPL to license GOOGL’s Gemini large-language model to power features coming to iOS 18. Still, confirmation about any deal unlikely before AAPL’s WWDC in June, but we think GOOGL is likely best positioned to win any external deal for AI on AAPL’s devices given the strong search partnership the two already have. Important, we think a major reason for AAPL’s stock underperformance this year has to do with the unknown from the pending DoJ case (along with its lack of AI tilt to other big tech firms), but if the talks bring about a deal then it could help offset potential losses that could result from regulatory pressure facing the search partnership. We do believe that the news likely confirms that AAPL’s internal efforts are well behind those of OpenAI/Gemini, but think it also shows that the company is serious about adding significant AI capabilities across iOS 18 this fall when its new iPhones launch.