One of the biggest advances in this year’s iPhones are the new Apple-made chips
Apple iPhone Pro A17 Pro chip.
Source: Apple Inc.
Apple today unveiled the new iPhone 15 to plenty of fanfare. But there’s also a big upgrade to the processor inside the 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max.
The new A17 Pro chip, designed by Apple, will have a six-core central processing unit and a six-core graphics processing unit. That’s one more GPU core than the A16 processor, which was found in last year’s iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max, and this year’s lower end iPhone 15 and 15 Plus.
The additional GPU core will enhance graphics performance, allowing new gaming capabilities such as ray tracing. The rendering technique allows for more realistic lighting of a scene for elements like reflections and shadows.
“They spent a lot of time emphasizing the GPU and that’s very telling,” said Ben Bajarin, CEO and principal analyst of Creative Strategies. “Camera, chip, GPU, visual experience, gaming: This is the next platform that takes iPhone the next four to five years.”
The enhanced graphics have led some game makers to create iPhone-native versions of their popular titles for the first time. Ubisoft‘s upcoming Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Capcom‘s Resident Evil 4 Remake are both set to come to the iPhone 15 Pro in the next year.
Apple’s latest processors are also its first chips to be made with 3-nanometer technology. As the most advanced semiconductor node currently available, it’s a likely culprit for the new generation’s price jump.
Advanced chips at this level are almost entirely made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., or TSMC, and Apple is its largest customer. This has been a cause for concern amid growing concerns about China invading Taiwan.
TSMC is now building a massive $40 billion new chip manufacturing plant in Arizona, although those plans have hit delays due to a shortage of skilled semiconductor labor in the U.S. Asian-made chips were also hit hard during the yearslong chip shortage that led to slowdown in production for everything from smartphones to cars.
“It’s tough because of supply constraints of 3-nanometer. It’s going to be hard to get increased capacity as demand goes up,” Bajarin said. “They’ve got enough for the Pro and ProMax for a few months.”
Bajarin said the platform shift to 3-nanometer chips is a “big step” that Apple will use to put itself into a competitive space with desktop processors like those made by Intel.
The new Apple Watch Series 9 also features new Apple silicon, in the form of a new chip Apple calls the S9 System in Package, or SiP. The tech giant is calling this its “most powerful watch chip yet.”
The S9 enables new features like a double-tap gesture for answering and ending calls without touching the watch, and on-device Siri, to allow private logging of health data off the cloud.
Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., during the US-Saudi Investment Forum at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025.
Stefani Reynolds | Bloomberg | Getty Images
In the weeks leading up to Nvidia’s third-quarter earnings report, investors debated whether the markets were in an AI bubble, fretting over the massive sums being committed to building data centers and whether they could provide a long-term return on investment.
During Wednesday’s earnings call with analysts, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang began his comments by rejecting that premise.
“There’s been a lot of talk about an AI bubble,” Huang said. “From our vantage point we see something very different.”
In many respects, Huang’s remarks are to be expected. He’s leading the company at the heart of the artificial intelligence boom, and has built its market cap to $4.5 trillion because of soaring demand for Nvidia’s graphics processing units.
Huang’s smackdown of bubble talk matters because Nvidia counts every major cloud provider — Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle — as a customer. Most of the major AI model developers, including OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI and Meta, are also big buyers of Nvidia GPUs.
Huang has deep visibility into the market, and on the call he offered a three-pronged argument for why we’re not in a bubble.
First, he said that areas like data processing, ad recommendations, search systems, and engineering, are turning to GPUs because they need the AI. That means older computing infrastructure based around the central processor will transition to new systems running on Nvidia’s chips.
Second, Huang said, AI isn’t just being integrated into current applications, but it will enable entirely new ones.
Finally, according to Huang, “agentic AI,” or applications that can run without significant input from the user, will be able to reason and plan, and will require even more computing power.
In making the case of Nvidia, Huang said it’s the only company that can address the three use cases.
“As you consider infrastructure investments, consider these three fundamental dynamics,” Huang said. “Each will contribute to infrastructure growth in the coming years.”
Reversing the slide
In its earnings release, Nvidia reported revenue and profit that sailed past estimates and issued better-than-expected guidance. Last month, Huang provided a $500 billion forecast for sales of the company’s AI chips over calendar 2025 and 2026.
The company said on Wednesday that its order backlog didn’t even include a few recent deals, like an agreement with Anthropic that was announced this week or the expansion of a deal with Saudi Arabia.
“The number will grow,” CFO Colette Kress said on the call, saying the company was on track to hit the forecast.
Prior to Wednesday’s results, Nvidia shares were down about 8% this month. Other stocks tied to the AI have gotten hit even harder, with CoreWeave plunging 44% in November, Oracle dropping 14% and Palantir falling 17%.
Some of the worry on Wall Street has been tied to the debt that certain companies have used to finance their infrastructure buildouts.
“Our customers’ financing is up to them,” Huang said.
Specific to Nvidia, investors have raised concerns in recent weeks about how much of the company’s sales were going to a small number of hyperscalers.
Last month, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Alphabet all lifted their forecasts for capital expenditures due to their AI buildouts, and now collectively expect to spend more than $380 billion this year.
Huang said that even without a new business model, Nvidia’s chips boost hyperscaler revenue, because they power recommendation systems for short videos, books, and ads.
People will soon start appreciating what’s happening underneath the surface of the AI boom, Huang said, versus “the simplistic view of what’s happening to capex and investment.”
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