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Apple’s new Vision Pro virtual reality headset is displayed during Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) at the Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California, on June 5, 2023.

Josh Edelson | Afp | Getty Images

For years, Apple avoided using the acronym AI when talking about its products. Not anymore.

The boom in generative artificial intelligence, spawned in late 2022 by OpenAI, has been the biggest story in the tech industry of late, lifting chipmaker Nvidia to a $3 trillion market cap and causing a major shifting of priorities at Microsoft, Google and Amazon, which are all racing to add the technology into their core services.

Investors and customers now want to see what the iPhone maker has in store.

New AI features are coming at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which takes place on Monday at Apple’s campus in Cupertino, California. Apple CEO Tim Cook has teased “big plans,” a change of approach for a company that doesn’t like to talk about products before they’re released.

WWDC isn’t typically a major investor attraction. On the first day, the company announces annual updates to its iOS, iPadOS, WatchOS and MacOS software in what’s usually a two-hour videotaped keynote launch event emceed by Cook. This year, the presentation will be screened at Apple’s headquarters. App developers then get a week of parties and virtual workshops where they learn about the new Apple software.

Apple fans get a preview of the software coming to iPhones. Developers can get to work updating their apps. New hardware products, if they appear at all, are not the showcase.

But this year, everyone will be listening for the most hyped acronym in tech.

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With more than 1 billion iPhones in use, Wall Street wants to hear what AI features are going to make the iPhone more competitive against Android rivals and how the company can justify its investment in developing its own chips.

Investors have rewarded companies that show a clear AI strategy and vision. Nvidia, the primary maker of AI processors, has seen its stock price triple in the past year. Microsoft, which is aggressively incorporating OpenAI into its products, is up 28% over the past year. Apple is only up 9% over that same period, and has seen the other two companies surpass it in market cap.

“This is the most important event for Cook and Cupertino in over a decade,” Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush, told CNBC. “The AI strategy is the missing piece in the growth puzzle for Apple and this event needs to be a showstopper and not a shrug-the-shoulders event.”

Taking the stage will be executives including software chief Craig Federighi, who will likely address the real life uses of Apple’s AI, whether it should be run locally or in massive cloud clusters and what should be built into the operating system versus distributed in an app.

Privacy is also a key issue, and attendees will likely want to know how Apple can deploy the data-hungry technology without compromising user privacy, a centerpiece of the company’s marketing for over half a decade.

“At WWDC, we expect Apple to unveil its long-term vision around its implementation of generative AI throughout its diverse ecosystem of personal devices,” wrote Gil Luria, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, in a note this week. “We believe that the impact of generative AI to Apple’s business is one of the most profound in all of technology, and unlike much of the innovation in AI that’s impacting the developer or enterprise, Apple has a clear opportunity to reach billions of consumer devices with generative AI functionality.”

Upgrading Siri

Last month, OpenAI revealed a voice mode for its AI software called ChatGPT-4o.

In a short demo, OpenAI researchers held an iPhone and spoke directly to the bot inside the ChatGPT app, which was able to do impressions, speak fluidly and even sing. The conversation was snappy, the bot gave advice and the voice sounded like a human. Further demos at the live event showed the bot singing, teaching trigonometry, translating and telling jokes.

Apple users and pundits immediately understood that OpenAI had demoed a preview of what Apple’s Siri could be in the future. Apple’s voice assistant debuted in 2011 and since has gained a reputation for not being useful. It’s rigid, only able to answer a small proportion of well-defined queries, partially because it’s based on older machine learning techniques.

Apple could team up with OpenAI to upgrade Siri next week. It’s been discussing licensing chatbot technology from other companies, too, including Google and Cohere, according to a report from The New York Times.

Apple declined to comment on an OpenAI partnership.

One possibility is that Apple’s new Siri won’t compete directly with fully featured chatbots, but will improve its current features, and toss off queries that can only be answered by a chatbot to a partner. It’s close to how Apple’s Spotlight search and Siri work now. Apple’s system tries to answer the question, but if it can’t, it turns to Google. That agreement is part of a deal worth $18 billion per year to Apple.

Apple might also shy away from a full-throated embrace of an OpenAI partnership or chatbot. One reason is that a malfunctioning chatbot could generate embarrassing headlines, and could undermine the company’s emphasis on user privacy and personal control of user data.

“Data security will be a key advantage for the company and we expect them to spend time talking about their privacy efforts during the WWDC as well,” Citi analyst Atif Malik said in a recent note.

OpenAI’s technology is based on web scraping, and ChatGPT user interactions are used to improve the model itself, a technique that could violate some of Apple’s privacy principles.

Large language models like OpenAI’s still have problems with inaccuracies or “hallucinations,” like when Google’s search AI said last month that President Barack Obama was the first Muslim president. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently found himself in the middle of a thorny societal debate about deepfakes and deception when he denied accusations from actress Scarlett Johansson that OpenAI’s voice mode had ripped off her voice. It’s the kind of conflict that Apple executives prefer to avoid.

Efficient vs. large

Apple senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi speaks before the start of the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference at its headquarters on June 05, 2023 in Cupertino, California. Apple CEO Tim Cook kicked off the annual WWDC23 developer conference.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Outside of Apple, AI has become reliant on big server farms using powerful Nvidia processors paired with terabytes of memory to crunch numbers.

Apple, by contrast, wants its AI features to run on iPhones, and iPads, and Macs, which operate on battery power. Cook has highlighted Apple’s own chips as superior for running AI models.

“We believe in the transformative power and promise of AI, and we believe we have advantages that will differentiate us in this new era, including Apple’s unique combination of seamless hardware, software, and services integration, groundbreaking Apple Silicon with our industry-leading neural engines, and our unwavering focus on privacy,” Cook told investors in May on an earnings call.

Samik Chatterjee, an analyst at JPMorgan, wrote in a note this month that, “We expect Apple’s presentation at WWDC keynote to be focused on the features and the on-device capabilities as well as the GenAI models being run on-device to enable those features.”

In April, Apple published research about AI models it calls “efficient language models” that would be able to run on a phone. Microsoft is also publishing research on the same concept. One of Apple’s “OpenELM” models has 1.1 billion parameters, or weights — far smaller than OpenAI’s 2020 GPT-3 model which has 175 billion parameters, and smaller even than the 70 billion parameters in one version of Meta’s Llama, which is one of the most widely used language models.

In the paper, Apple’s researchers benchmarked the model on a MacBook Pro laptop running Apple’s M2 Max chip, showing that these efficient models don’t necessarily need to connect to the cloud. That can improve response speed, and provide a layer of privacy, because sensitive questions could be answered on the device itself, rather than being sent back to Apple servers.

Some of the features built into Apple’s software could include providing users a summary of their missed text messages, image generation for new emojis, code completing in the company’s development software Xcode, or drafting email responses, according to Bloomberg.

Apple could also decide to load up its M2 Ultra chips in its data centers to process AI queries that need more horsepower, Bloomberg reported.

Green bubbles and Vision Pro

A customer uses Apple’s Vision Pro headset at the Apple Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan in New York City, U.S., February 2, 2024. 

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

WWDC won’t strictly be about AI.

The company has more than 2.2 billion devices in use, and customers want improved software and new apps.

One potential upgrade could be Apple’s adoption of RCS, an improvement to the older system of text messaging known as SMS. Apple’s messages app diverts texts between iPhones to its own iMessage system, which displays conversations as blue bubbles. When an iPhone texts an Android phone, the bubble is green. Many features such as typing notifications aren’t available.

Google led development of RCS, adding encryption and other features to text messaging. Late last year Apple confirmed that it would add support for RCS alongside iMessage. The debut of iOS 18 would be the logical time to show its work.

The conference will also be the first anniversary of Apple’s reveal of the Vision Pro, its virtual and augmented reality headset, which was released in the U.S. in February. Apple could announce its expansion to more countries, including China and the U.K.

Apple said in its WWDC announcement that the Vision Pro would be in the spotlight. Vision Pro is currently on the first version of its operating system, and core features, such as its Persona videoconferencing simulation, are still in beta.

For users with a Vision Pro, Apple will offer some of its virtual sessions at the event in a 3D environment.

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Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange Bullish files to go public on NYSE

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Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange Bullish files to go public on NYSE

Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, holds hundred dollar bills as he speaks during the Bitcoin 2022 Conference at Miami Beach Convention Center on April 7, 2022 in Miami, Florida.

Marco Bello | Getty Images

The Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange Bullish filed for an IPO on Friday, the latest digital asset firm to head for the public market.

The company, led by CEO Tom Farley, a veteran of the finance industry and former president of the New York Stock Exchange, said it plans to trade on the NYSE under the ticker symbol “BLSH.”

A spinout of Block.one, Bullish started with an initial investment from backers including Thiel’s Founders Fund and Thiel Capital, along with Nomura, Mike Novogratz and others. Bullish acquired crypto news site CoinDesk in 2023.

“In the first quarter of 2025, Bullish exchange executed over $2.5 billion in average daily volume, ranking in the top five exchanges by spot volume for Bitcoin and Ether,” the company said on its website. The prospectus listed top competitors as Binance, Coinbase and Kraken.

The IPO filing says that as of March 31, the total trading volume since launch has exceeded $1.25 trillion.

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The filing is another significant step for the cryptocurrency industry, which has fought for years to convince institutions to embrace digital assets as legitimate investments.

It’s already been a big year on the market for crypto offerings, highlighted by stablecoin issuer Circle, which has jumped more than sevenfold since its IPO in June. Etoro, an online trading platform that includes services for crypto investors, debuted in May.

Novogratz‘s crypto firm Galaxy Digital started trading on the Nasdaq in May, moving its listing from the Toronto Stock Exchange. And in June, Gemini, the cryptocurrency exchange and custodian founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, confidentially filed for an IPO in the U.S.

Meanwhile, investors continue to flock to bitcoin. The digital currency is trading at over $117,000, up from about $94,000 at the start of the year.

President Donald Trump, on Friday, signed the GENIUS Act into law — a set of regulations that establish some initial consumer protections around stablecoins, which are tied to assets like the U.S. dollar with the intent of reducing price volatility associated with many cryptocurrencies.

In its filing with the SEC, Bullish says its mission is partly to “drive the adoption of stablecoins, digital assets, and blockchain technology.”

Crypto industry players, including Thiel, Elon Musk, and President Trump’s AI and Crypto czar David Sacks spent heavily to re-elect Trump and have pushed for legislation that legitimizes digital assets and exchanges.

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Microsoft stops relying on Chinese engineers for Pentagon cloud support

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Microsoft stops relying on Chinese engineers for Pentagon cloud support

Microsoft Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella (L) returns to the stage after a pre-recorded interview during the Microsoft Build conference opening keynote in Seattle, Washington on May 19, 2025.

Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images

Microsoft on Friday revised its practices to ensure that engineers in China no longer provide technical support to U.S. defense clients using the company’s cloud services.

The company implemented the changes in an effort to reduce national security and cybersecurity risks stemming from its cloud work with a major customer. The announcement came days after ProPublica published an extensive report describing the Defense Department’s dependence on Microsoft software engineers in China.

“In response to concerns raised earlier this week about US-supervised foreign engineers, Microsoft has made changes to our support for US Government customers to assure that no China-based engineering teams are providing technical assistance for DoD Government cloud and related services,” Frank Shaw, the Microsoft’s chief communications officer, wrote in a Friday X post.

The change impacts the work of Microsoft’s Azure cloud services division, which analysts estimate now generates more than 25% of the company’s revenue. That makes Azure bigger than Google Cloud but smaller than Amazon Web Services. Microsoft receives “substantial revenue from government contracts,” according to its most recent quarterly earnings statement, and more than half of the company’s $70 billion in first-quarter revenue came from customers based in the U.S.

In 2019, Microsoft won a $10 billion cloud-related defense contract, but the Pentagon wound up canceling it in 2021 after a legal battle. In 2022, the department gave cloud contracts worth up to $9 billion in total to Amazon, Google, Oracle and Microsoft.

ProPublica reported that the work of Microsoft’s Chinese Azure engineers is overseen by “digital escorts” in the U.S., who typically have less technical prowess than the employees they manage overseas. The report detailed how the “digital escort” arrangement might leave the U.S. vulnerable to a cyberattack from China.

“This is obviously unacceptable, especially in today’s digital threat environment,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a video posted to X on Friday. He described the architecture as “a legacy system created over a decade ago, during the Obama administration.” The Defense Department will review its systems in search for similar activity, Hegseth said.

Microsoft originally told ProPublica that its employees and contractors were adhering to U.S. government rules.

“We remain committed to providing the most secure services possible to the US government, including working with our national security partners to evaluate and adjust our security protocols as needed,” Shaw wrote.

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The investor behind Opendoor’s 190% run nearly shut down his fund

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The investor behind Opendoor's 190% run nearly shut down his fund

Courtesy: Opendoor

On June 6, online real estate service Opendoor was so desperate to get its beaten-down stock price back over $1 and stay listed on the Nasdaq that management proposed a reverse split, potentially lifting the price of each share by as much as 50 times.

The stock inched its way up over the next five weeks.

Then Eric Jackson started cheerleading.

Jackson, a hedge fund manager who was bullish on Opendoor years earlier when the company appeared to be thriving and was worth roughly $20 billion, wrote on X on Monday that his firm, EMJ Capital, was back in the stock.

“@EMJCapital has taken a position in $OPEN — and we believe it could be a 100-bagger over the next few years,” Jackson wrote. He added later in the thread that the stock could get to $82.

It’s a long, long way from that mark.

Opendoor shares soared 189% this week, by far their best weekly performance since the company’s public market debut in late 2020. The stock closed on Friday at $2.25. The stock’s highest-volume trading days on record were Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week.

Jackson said in an interview on Thursday that the bulk of his firm’s Opendoor purchases came when the stock was in the 70s and 80s, meaning cents, and he’s bought options as well for his portfolio.

Nothing has fundamentally improved for the company since Jackson’s purchases. Opendoor remains a cash-burning, low-margin business with meager near-term growth prospects.

What has changed dramatically is Jackson’s online influence and the size of his following. The more he posts, the higher the stock goes.

“There’s a real hunger for buying the next big thing,” Jackson told CNBC, adding that investors like to find the “downtrodden.”

It’s something Jackson’s firm, based in Toronto, has in common with Opendoor.

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When Opendoor went public through a special purpose acquisition company in 2020, it was riding a SPAC wave and broader gains driven by low interest rates and Covid-era market euphoria. Investors pumped money into the riskiest assets, lifting money-losing tech upstarts to astronomical valuations.

Opendoor’s business involved using technology to buy and sell homes, pocketing the gains. Zillow tried and failed to compete.

Opendoor shares peaked at over $39 in Feb. 2021 for a market cap just above $22.5 billion. But by the end of that year, the shares were trading below $15, before collapsing 92% in 2022 to end the year at $1.16.

Rising interest rates hammered the whole tech sector, hitting Opendoor particularly hard as increased borrowing costs reduced demand for homes.

Jackson, similarly, had a miserable 2022, coinciding with the worst year for the Nasdaq since 2008. Jackson said his key client withdrew its money at the end of the year, and “I’ve been small ever since.”

‘Epic comeback’

While his assets under management remain minimal, Jackson’s reputation for getting in early to a rebound story was burnished by the performance of Carvana.

The automotive e-commerce platform lost 98% of its value in 2022 as investors weighed the likelihood of bankruptcy. In the middle of that year, with Carvana still far from bottoming out, Jackson expressed his bullishness. He told CNBC that April that he liked the stock, and then promoted its recovery on a podcast in June. He also said he liked Opendoor at the time.

Investors willing to stomach further losses in 2022 were rewarded with a 1,000% gain in 2023, and a lot more upside from there. The stock closed on Friday at $347.52, up from a low of $3.72 in Dec. 2022, and almost triple its price at the time of Jackson’s appearance on CNBC in April of that year.

After Carvana’s 2022 slide, “then obviously began an epic comeback,” Jackson said. Opendoor, meanwhile, “continued to roll down the mountain,” he said.

Jackson said that the fallout of 2022 led him to pursue a different method of stockpicking. He started hiring a small team of developers, which is now four people, to build out artificial intelligence models. The firm has experimented with several models —some have worked and some haven’t — but he said the focus now is using what he’s learned from Carvana to find “100x” opportunities.

In addition to Opendoor, Jackson has been promoting IREN, a provider of power for bitcoin mining and AI workloads, and Cipher Mining, which is in a similar space. He’s seen his following on Elon Musk‘s social media site X, which he said was stuck for years between 32,000 and 34,000, swell to almost 50,000. And after a lengthy lull, investors are reaching out to him to try and put money into his fund, he said.

Jackson has a lot riding on Opendoor, a company that saw revenue and number of homes sold slip in the first quarter from a year earlier, and racked up almost $370 million in losses over the past four quarters.

In early June, Opendoor announced plans for a reverse split — ranging from 1 for 10 to 1 for 50 — to “give us optionality in preserving our listing on Nasdaq.” With the stock now well over $1, such a move appears less necessary, as shareholders prepare to vote on the proposal on July 28.

“I think it’s a terrible idea,” said Jackson. “Those things usually further cement a company’s move into oblivion rather than hail some big revival.”

Opendoor didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Banking on growth

Analysts are projecting a more than 5% drop in revenue this year, followed by 20% growth in 2026 and 12% expansion in 2017, according to LSEG. Losses are expected to narrow over that stretch.

Jackson said his analysis factors in projections of $11.5 billion in revenue for 2029, which would be well over double the company’s expected sales for this year. He looked at the multiples of companies like Zillow and Carvana, which he said trade for 4 to 7 times forward revenue. Opendoor’s forward price-to-sales ratio is currently well below 1.

With Zillow and Redfin having exited the instant-buying home market, Opendoor faces little competition in allowing homeowners to sell their property online for cash, rather than going through an extended bidding, sales and closing process.

Jackson is banking on revenue growth and increased market share to lead to a profitable business that will push investors to value the company with a multiple somewhere between Zillow and Carvana. At $82, Opendoor would be worth about $60 billion, which is roughly 5 times projected 2029 revenue.

Jackson said his model assumes that “like Carvana, Opendoor can prove that it can permanently turn the tide and get to sustained profitability” so that the “market multiple would get reassessed.”

In the meantime, he’ll keep posting on X.

On Friday, Jackson wrote a thread consisting of 11 posts, recounting the challenge of having “99.5% of my AUM” disappear overnight after his primary investor pulled out in 2022.

“Translation: he fired me for losing him too much money,” Jackson wrote. He said he almost shut down the fund, and was even encouraged to do so by his wife and accountant.

Now, Jackson is using his recent momentum on social media to try and attract investor money, while still reminding prospects that he could lose it.

“All I have is my reputation,” he wrote, “and, unless I keep picking good stocks, it will be gone.”

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