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Tim Cook, Apple’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) greets the media with folded hands outside the Apple store at Jio World Drive mall, Mumbai, India, April 18, 2023.

Ashish Vaishnav | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Apple CEO Tim Cook is in India this week. He’s opened two new Apple stores, is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and he’s seeing sights and visiting customers in the country.

The international trip is the strongest sign yet that India has become a huge strategic focus for Apple as supply chains move away from China and its smartphone market is increasingly saturated with iPhone owners.

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India could echo the role China has played in Apple’s business for the last 15 years: A massive market with an expanding middle class to power sales growth, and potentially a home base for the production of millions of Apple devices.

Analysts say that India’s large population and maturing economy is ideally situated for Apple to make inroads by increasing marketing efforts and offering retail in the country. At the same time, India’s government is eager to work closely with Apple to make it possible to manufacture in the country, CNBC reported.

There’s room for Apple to grow on the subcontinent: Apple has less than 5% of the smartphone market share in India, versus about 18% in China, said Angelo Zino, senior analyst at CFRA research. The bulk of smartphone sales in both countries use versions of the Android operating system created by Google.

“As you look at India today, it’s very similar to China 15 or 20 years ago,” Zino said. “It’s really that natural wealth effect over time that’s going to help Apple really penetrate and see significantly higher revenue potential in India.”

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The opportunity could be massive: Apple did $74 billion in sales in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan in fiscal 2022. That’s about 18% of Apple’s total revenue during the period.

India is not there yet. It’s reported in a category with other markets called “rest of Asia Pacific,” which reported only $29 billion in sales during the same time period.

Corporate filings in India covered by local media suggest that Apple’s sales in the country were about $4 billion in fiscal 2022, and Bloomberg reported earlier this week that Apple reported nearly $6 billion in sales in the year ending in March.

Cook has also made the India-China comparison to investors.

“We are, in essence, taking what we learned in China years ago and how we scale to China and bringing that to bear,” Cook said on an earnings call earlier this year.

Nearly all Android

India is the largest market that the iPhone hasn’t fully cracked, meaning it is critical for sales growth.

Cook boasted in February that the company was successfully wooing “switchers” in the country. That’s Apple’s word for previous Android phone owners who have decided to buy their first iPhone. Cook said in February that Apple had its best sales quarter ever for iPhones in India in the quarter ending in December.

A woman poses for a photo near the screen displaying Apple’s tablets inside the store after the launch at Jio World Drive mall, Mumbai, India, April 18, 2023.

Ashish Vaishnav | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Indians who buy iPhones are much more likely to be “switchers” than customers elsewhere because Android dominates the Indian market, led by Samsung and several Chinese brands. Android had over 95% of market share in the country, according to Statcounter.

The main reason is price. Most phones sold in India are priced below even the least-expensive new Apple iPhone. Industry analyst IDC estimated in February that the average selling price of a smartphone in India is $224, which had increased 18% in 2022. Apple’s entry level phone — the iPhone SE — retails for $429 in the U.S.

One way for Apple to address this gap is by allowing customers to pay for their phones in installments, or giving them a discount for trading in an older device. Cook mentioned these strategies when he was asked about India in February.

“There’s been a lot done from financing options and trade-ins to make products more affordable and give people more options to buy,” Cook said.

The two physical Apple stores opening this week and the online Apple store which launched in the country in 2020 are also expected to boost sales.

‘Make in India’

The second part of the strategy is to build Apple products in the country, a massive project that requires not only Apple’s attention, but also efforts from its manufacturing partners and local and national governments.

Nearly all iPhones are currently assembled in China, which has caused some problems over the past five years, starting with trade tensions and possible tariffs during the Trump administration, and extending to more recent supply chain disruptions caused by Covid and China’s Covid policies, which led to sales shortfalls.

India could end up being a big winner as Apple looks for non-Chinese manufacturing options. In January, India’s commerce minister told CNBC that Apple was manufacturing its latest iPhone 14 in the country and had a goal to produce as many as 25% of all iPhones in the country.

Apple’s primary manufacturing partner, Foxconn, which oversees a large portion of the assembly of new iPhones in China, is expanding in India, too, reportedly building a $700 million plant for iPhone parts in Bangalore.

In another parallel to China, the Indian government is eager to embrace Apple and use it as a symbol to attract other high tech firms to the country for manufacturing and development. Over the past 20 years, Chinese governments at multiple levels have worked to make massive factories like Foxconn’s Zhengzhou factory — known as “iPhone City” — possible.

Modi wants to discuss Apple’s plans for manufacturing around the country and creating manufacturing jobs, CNBC’s Seema Mody reported. He also wants to know about the challenges Apple has faced in growing its user base in the country.

Not so fast

Tim Cook, Apple’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) reacts as a man shows him Apple’s Macintosh outside the Apple store at Jio World Drive mall, Mumbai, India on April 18, 2023.

Ashish Vaishnav | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Apple has had its eyes on an India expansion since at least 2016, when Cook previously met Modi.

At that meeting, Cook told Modi about the potential for manufacturing and retailing Apple goods in the country. Now, six years later, Cook is back in India to open up the company’s first two owned-and-operated retail stores.

Apple was bullish on India back then, too: “India will be the most populous country in the world in 2022,” Cook told CNBC’s Jim Cramer at the time, saying it had “huge market potential.”

Apple’s long-term strategy in India is best summarized by a quote Cook gave to local media during his 2016 trip to the subcontinent.

“We are putting enormous energy in here, and we are not here for a quarter, or two quarters, or the next quarter, or the next year, or the next year, we are here for a thousand years,” Cook said.

Apple opens first India retail store with Tim Cook on site

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No ‘woke AI’ in Washington, Trump says as he launches American AI action plan

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No ‘woke AI’ in Washington, Trump says as he launches American AI action plan

U.S. President Donald Trump holds an executive order related to AI after signing it during the “Winning the AI Race” Summit in Washington D.C., U.S., July 23, 2025.

Kent Nishimura | Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed to keep “woke AI” models out of Washington and to turn the country into an “AI export powerhouse” through the signing of three artificial intelligence-focused executive orders on Wednesday. 

The phasing out of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives — an umbrella term encompassing various practices, policies, and strategies aimed at fostering a more inclusive and equitable culture — has been a major focus of the second Trump administration. Now, the White House is bringing the battle to AI. 

The “PREVENTING WOKE AI IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT” order states that the federal government “has the obligation not to procure models that sacrifice truthfulness and accuracy to ideological agendas.”

The executive order identifies DEI as one of the “most pervasive and destructive” of these ideologies to be kept out of AI models used by the government. 

“LLMs shall be neutral, nonpartisan tools that do not manipulate responses in favor of ideological dogmas such as DEI,” the order said, adding that developers should not intentionally encode partisan or ideological judgments into an LLM’s outputs unless those judgments are prompted by users. 

As acknowledged by the order, the use of AI is increasingly prevalent across Americans’ daily lives and is expected to play a critical role in the way they learn and consume information — making “reliable outputs” necessary.

In the eyes of the Trump administration, DEI in AI can lead to discriminatory outcomes; distort and manipulate AI model outputs in regard to race and sex; and incorporate concepts like critical race theory, transgenderism, unconscious bias, intersectionality and systemic racism. 

“DEI displaces the commitment to truth in favor of preferred outcomes and, as recent history illustrates, poses an existential threat to reliable AI,” the anti-woke order reads. 

Without giving specifics, the order refers to past examples of this, including a major AI model that changed the race or sex of historical figures such as the pope and Founding Fathers when prompted for images.  

In response to backlash last year, Google had pulled its Gemini AI image generation feature, saying it offered “inaccuracies” in historical pictures. Months later, the company rolled out an improved version. 

Instead of “woke AI”, the government should procure “truth-seeking” AI models that “prioritize historical accuracy, scientific inquiry, and objectivity, and shall acknowledge uncertainty where reliable information is incomplete or contradictory,” the order stated. 

However, it adds that the federal government “should be hesitant” to regulate the functionality of AI models in the private marketplace.

In other AI developments on Wednesday, the Trump administration signed an order to spur innovation in the technology by removing what it called “onerous Federal regulations that hinder AI development and deployment.”

Another order aims to establish and implement an “American AI Exports Program” to support the development and deployment of the U.S. AI technology stack abroad. 

The moves are part of the administration’s “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” which it says identifies 90 federal policy actions across three pillars: the acceleration of innovation, building of AI infrastructure, and leadership in international diplomacy and security.

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Estonia’s tech elite are getting behind a European challenger to Robinhood

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Estonia's tech elite are getting behind a European challenger to Robinhood

The Lightyear app.

Lightyear

Some of the biggest names of Estonia’s tech scene are backing Lightyear, a startup looking to become Europe’s answer to commission-free trading pioneer Robinhood.

Based in London, Lightyear develops an app that lets users invest in a range of over 5,000 stocks, exchange-traded funds and money market funds. It was founded by two former Wise employees, Martin Sokk and Mihkel Aamer, in 2021.

The company is set to announce later on Thursday that it has raised $23 million in a new round of funding led by NordicNinja, a Japanese-backed venture capital fund based in Europe. Estonian tech entrepreneur Markus Villig, who co-founded ride-hailing unicorn Bolt has also invested.

Lightyear CEO Sokk told CNBC that the firm didn’t necessarily need to raise more cash for the business but chose to do so because of the caliber of investors involved.

“People like Markus have been building massive companies in many, many markets, and this is something that’s really exciting for us because it’s so hard to go into all the markets and understand their local dynamics and what people need,” he said.

Lightyear currently operates in 25 countries. However, with help from angel investors like Bolt’s Villig, the firm will be able to launch in another five markets “pretty quickly,” Sokk said.

Villig told CNBC that it can be “challenging to scale a business across multiple countries in a heavily regulated sector,” adding that Europe’s less developed retail investing market provides ample opportunities for disruption.

Other Estonian angel investors who have previously backed Lightyear also participated in the funding round, including Wise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus, Checkout.com’s former Chief Technology Officer Ott Kaukver and Skype founding engineer Jaan Tallinn.

Estonia is widely considered a prominent tech hub in Europe. The country is home to the highest number of unicorns per capita in Europe, according to the Estonian Investment Agency. Meanwhile, Estonia’s e-residency scheme has also enabled foreigners to become digital residents and launch their companies in the country.

The new round values five-year-old Lightyear at between $200 million and $300 million, significantly higher than its valuation in 2022 when it raised $25 million, according to two people familiar with the matter who preferred to remain anonymous as the information has not been made public.

Pushing into AI, crypto

Alongside the additional funding, Lightyear is also launching new artificial intelligence features. AI has been a hot area of investment for startups following the explosive popularity of generative AI services like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

One of the features, called “Why Did It Move,” allows users to select a point in time on a stock chart and see what happened that day to cause a jump or fall in a company’s share price. The firm is also using AI to provide “bull” and “bear” theses on stocks as well as short updates on assets in their own portfolios.

“In the end, you’re going to have two models” when it comes to investing, according to Sokk: “Self-driving money,” where you ask an AI to achieve certain investment goals, and a “manual gearbox” approach of figuring out different strategies and approaches on your own.

Still, the market for online investment products is heavily competitive. Lightyear faces some hefty competition from both incumbent brokerage services as well as more modern tech players such as Robinhood, Revolut and Trade Republic.

However, Sokk insists Lightyear is building a differentiated enough product to stand out from the crowd. While competitors like Robinhood profit from offering risky products like crypto and margin trading, Lightyear is focused on serving long-term investors, he told CNBC.

To that end, Sokk said Lightyear is planning on rolling out a crypto product of its own in two months’ time — one that’s “more focused on a long-term view.”

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Google’s $85 billion capital spend spurred by cloud, AI demand

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Google's  billion capital spend spurred by cloud, AI demand

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc., during Stanford’s 2024 Business, Government, and Society forum in Stanford, California, April 3, 2024.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Google is going to spend $10 billion more this year than it previously expected due to the growing demand for cloud services, which has created a backlog, executives said Wednesday.

As part of its second quarter earnings, the company increased its forecast for capital expenditures in 2025 to $85 billion due to “strong and growing demand for our Cloud products and services” as it continues to expand infrastructure to power more AI services that use its cloud technology. That’s up from the $75 billion projection that Google provided in February, which was already above the $58.84 billion that Wall Street expected at the time.

The increased forecast comes as demand for cloud services surges across the tech industry as AI services increase in popularity. As a result, companies are doubling down on infrastructure to keep pace with demand and are planning multi‑year buildouts of data centers.

In its second quarter earnings, Google reported that cloud revenues increased by 32% to $13.6 billion in the period. The demand is so high for Google’s cloud services that it now amounts to a $106 billion backlog, Alphabet finance chief Anat Ashkenazi said during the company’s post-earnings conference call.

“It’s a tight supply environment,” she said.

The vast majority of Alphabet’s capital spend was invested in technical infrastructure during the second quarter, with approximately two-thirds of investments going to servers and one-third in data center and networking equipment, Ashkenazi said.

She added that the updated outlook reflects additional investment in servers, the timing of delivery of servers and “an acceleration in the pace of data center construction, primarily to meet Cloud customer demand.”

Ashkenazi said that despite the company’s “improved” pace of getting servers up and running, investors should expect further increase in capital spend in 2026 “due to the demand as well as growth opportunities across the company.” She didn’t specify what those opportunities are but said the company will provide more details on a future earnings call.

“We’re increasing capacity with every quarter that goes by,” Ashkenazi said. 

Due to the increased spend, Google will have to record more expenses over time, which will make profits look smaller, she said.

“Obviously, we’re working hard to bring more capacity online,” Ashkenazi said.

WATCH: Alphabet shares Q2 shares sink despite revenue and earnings beat

Alphabet shares Q2 shares sink despite revenue and earnings beat

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