Apple buying Disney would be a storybook ending for Iger, but fairy tales aren’t real
About 10 years ago, I invented a rule about covering mergers and acquisitions that still hasn’t failed me.
Here it is: Will Apple buy [insert company of your choice here]? –> No.
Apple almost never buys name-brand companies. Its largest takeover was 2014’s $3 billion deal for Beats Electronics. Apple is strict about its culture and its focus. While Microsoft has acquired its way to increased scale — buying Activision Blizzard for $69 billion, LinkedIn for $26 billion, Nuance Communications for $20 billion, and five other companies for more than $5 billion — M&A isn’t in Apple’s DNA.
Read more: Iger, Chapek and the making of Disney’s succession mess
For years, analysts and reporters have speculated Apple might want to buy Disney, a company with a market valuation of nearly $150 billion. The ties between the two companies are historically strong. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs became Disney’s largest individual shareholder after Disney acquired Pixar, then owned by Jobs, for $7.4 billion in 2006. The deal also gave Jobs a seat on the Disney board and fostered a close friendship between Jobs and Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger.
Apple’s market capitalization is near $3 trillion. Buying Disney wouldn’t even classify as a bet-the-company transaction.
In his 2019 autobiography, “The Ride of a Lifetime,” Iger acknowledged he believes Disney and Apple may have merged if Jobs, who passed away in 2011, had lived longer.
“I believe that if Steve were still alive, we would have combined our companies, or at least discussed the possibility very seriously,” Iger wrote.
Since his return as CEO in November, Iger has kept Disney’s connection with Jobs alive. A few months ago, many Disney employees came to their offices to find copies of a book, “Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in His Own Words,” on their desks. Iger sent an email to all Disney employees touting the book, describing it as “another tool from Steve — a resource for you, the reader, to spark the creativity that lives inside all of us.”
Selling Disney to Apple could be a storybook ending for Iger, who could argue the best way to transition Disney into a modern media company is to pair up with the most successful technology company in history. Disney’s family-friendly brand may be a fit with Apple, which appeals to consumers around the world.
Still, it’s not clear Apple would have any interest in buying Disney. Beyond its treatment of M&A as anathema, Apple has no core competency running theme parks or selling the kinds of consumer products Disney offers. It almost certainly wouldn’t want to be in the dying cable television business.
While Apple has dabbled in owning sports rights and creating scripted content for Apple TV+, the businesses are so small relative to making and selling devices that they’re essentially non-material to the company. Apple hasn’t bothered to tell investors the number of Apple TV+ subscribers.
On one hand, buying Disney would supercharge those fledging businesses, which could help with Apple device churn while growing subscription revenue.
On the other, if Apple wants to spend more than $100 billion on an acquisition, getting an ESPN business with shrinking subscribers and a content business centered around streaming, which currently loses money, may not be its deal of choice.
Apple could buy Disney to make content for its augmented reality headset, potentially the company’s next major growth division, but that’s probably not enough of a reason to make an acquisition.
Regulatory and culture issues
Even if Apple CEO Tim Cook fell in love with the notion of owning Disney and its associated perks (free Disney World rides for Apple employees! Content synergies for device owners!), it’s ambiguous at best, and unlikely at worst, whether regulators would allow a deal to proceed.
With Lina Khan running the Federal Trade Commission, which has tried to crack down on big tech acquisitions under her watch, the chances of the U.S. government allowing Apple to increase its dominance over the global economy seem minute. Perhaps Apple and Disney could sue to win approval — the businesses don’t have much overlap — but the process would be time-consuming and messy, bringing unneeded uncertainty to both companies.
For the sake of argument, let’s say Apple does want to buy Disney. Let’s say Disney divests or sells its legacy cable assets, ridding itself of no-growth businesses that would weigh on Apple’s earnings. Let’s even say the regulatory environment changes so the U.S. government would be more amenable to a deal.
An agreement would mean Disney’s corporate culture would have to blend with Apple’s culture. The Bob Chapek era at Disney illustrated the strength of Disney’s existing culture and showcased how changing employee attitudes and expectations isn’t easy — even for someone who had spent three decades at the company. Merging the two distinct, well-established cultures seems like a potential recipe for disaster.
The overwhelming evidence on large media mergers — AOL buying Time Warner, AT&T buying Time Warner, CBS and Viacom merging, Discovery and WarnerMedia merging — is immense value destruction.
So, could Apple one day buy Disney? Sure. But I’m in no rush to alter my M&A cardinal rule.
Alibaba‘s Hong Kong-listed shares surged on Wednesday to reach their highest point since 2021 after the company said it will invest more in artificial intelligence and rolled out new AI products and updates.
Shares of the company jumped over 6%, while its total gains year to date rose above 107%.
The tech giant plans to increase spending on AI models and infrastructure development, on top of the 380 billion yuan ($53 billion) over three years it announced in February, Chief Executive Officer Eddie Wu said Wednesday at Alibaba Cloud’s annual flagship technology conference.
“We are vigorously advancing a three-year, 380 billion [yuan] AI infrastructure initiative with plans to sustain and further increase our investment according to our strategic vision in anticipation of the [artificial superintelligence] era,” Wu said.
Alibaba shares surge after CEO unveils plans to boost AI spending
So-called ‘artificial superintelligence’ refers to AI that would hypothetically surpass the power and intelligence of the human brain, with the hypothetical benchmark becoming a growing focus of major AI companies.
Alibaba also officially unveiled the latest version of its Qwen large language models — the Qwen3-Max — on Wednesday, along with a series of other updates to its suite of AI product offerings.
Wu highlighted that Alibaba Cloud is strategically positioned as a “full-stack AI service provider,” delivering the computing power required for training and deploying large AI models on the cloud through its own data centers.
“The cumulative investment in global AI in the next five years will exceed $4 trillion, and this is the largest investment in computing power and research and development in history,” he added.
A person walks by a sign for Micron Technology headquarters in San Jose, California, on June 25, 2025.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Micron reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue on Tuesday as well as a robust forecast for the current quarter.
The stock rose in extended trading.
Here’s how the company did in comparison with the LSEG consensus:
- Earnings per share: $3.03, adjusted, vs. $2.86 expected
- Revenue: $11.32 billion vs. $11.22 billion expected
Micron said revenue in the current period, its fiscal first quarter, will be about $12.5 billion, versus the $11.94 billion average analyst estimate per LSEG.
The company said it had $3.2 billion, or $2.83 per share in net income, versus $887 million, or 79 cents in the year-ago period.
Micron shares have nearly doubled so far in 2025. The company makes memory and storage, which are important components for computers. Micron has been one of the winners of the artificial intelligence boom. That’s because high-end AI chips like those made by Nvidia require increasing amounts of high-tech memory called high-bandwidth memory, which Micron makes.
“As the only U.S.-based memory manufacturer, Micron is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the AI opportunity ahead,” Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in a statement.
Overall company revenue rose 46% on a year-over-year basis during the quarter.
Micron’s largest unit, which sells memory for cloud providers, reported $4.54 billion in sales during the quarter, more than tripling on a year-over-year basis.
However, the company’s core data center business unit saw sales decline 22% on an annual basis to $1.57 billion in revenue.
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