Apple could soon have its first in-house AI server chips according to recent news about its collaboration with Broadcom. As soon as 2026, the iPhone maker could be using its own AI chips for its AI requirements.
Apple has been late to the AI party compared to its peers, but the tech giant has historically taken its time to perfect its services before rolling them out. It can afford to do that thanks to its unique ecosystem, something that many other tech companies lack.
Over the past 2 years, Apple has used Google’s AI chips for training its models. More recently, the company’s executive Benoit Dupin talked about how they were evaluating using Amazon’s AI chips. For a company that is known to add unique products to its eco-system, this reliance on other companies isn’t ideal. The deal with Broadcom is a step towards independence and possibly taking a lead over other companies for future AI features.
Apple will opt for Taiwan Semiconductor’s 3nm technology to mass manufacture these chips. It could take over a year and a half for that plan to come to fruition.
The AI chip in question is known as Baltra and is different from AI chips that train AI models. Its main use will be in inferencing, a process where the chip processes the data it is fed and then passes it on to a large language model for output.
These measures are partly due to Nvidia’s dominance in the chip space, with many companies uncomfortable with their over-reliance on the semiconductor giant. Google took a similar step with Broadcom to create its AI chips, ones that Apple has also utilized. Apple itself has a history of moving on from reliance on chip manufacturers. It built in-house chips for Mac laptops, which helped it reduce reliance on Intel.
AVGO stock is up over 5% after this development and continues to outperform the S&P 500 this year with over twice as much gains. Apple, on the other hand, has slightly underperformed the index.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.