The Zhitong Finance App learned that Apple (AAPL.US) continues to be unique among its big tech peers, and has largely avoided the wave of aggressive capital expenditure related to artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.
Since the beginning of 2023, peers have greatly expanded their spending, while Apple's spending has remained flat when indexed for this base period.
According to data for the third quarter of 2026, Alphabet (GOOGL.US)'s capital expenditure index climbed above 800, Microsoft (MSFT.US) close to 620, Meta Platforms (META.US) close to 500, and Amazon (AMZN.US) to exceed 300. In contrast, Apple has been hovering around or slightly below the 100 baseline.
The share of sales is also huge: Meta's ratio has climbed to over 50%, Microsoft is close to 45%, Alphabet is about 40%, Amazon is around 35%, and Apple is still below 5%.
This restraint reflects Apple's different business model and prudent approach to investing in AI — focusing more on integration and device-side capabilities rather than large-scale data center expansion.
Shifting from restraint to speeding up
Despite this, Apple's “restraint” narrative is facing pressure from the highest levels. In November 2026, Apple's new CEO John Turnus, who has only been in office for two months, sent a clear signal to Craig Federigi, head of software engineering: Apple is far behind its competitors in AI, must show the same sense of urgency to accelerate the roadmap, and can no longer be satisfied with “just making necessary repairs to Siri.”
According to related reports, Tenus was dissatisfied with Federici's failure to actively embrace AI as his rival and asked the latter to adopt a bolder strategy.
Tenus' specific goal is to drive Siri's transformation from an AI agent that “responds to user instructions” to an AI agent that “continuously tracks targets, actively plans, and performs tasks”. This upgrade is likely to be implemented as early as 2027.