Apple should be the one on a hiring spree. Over the past few weeks, Mark Zuckerberg and Meta have kicked the hiring and acquisitions machine into high gear. The man knows he can’t miss out on the next platform shift and it shows. It wasn’t the metaverse and it wasn’t goggles, but it’s almost certainly some form of personalized super intelligence.

Meta has hired several big names, poaching them directly from OpenAI. There’s a serious turf war occurring as they realize that Llama and their existing offerings just weren’t cutting it. On top of the hirings, it’s been rumored that Meta has looked into a variety of AI company acquisitions from Perplexity, to Play, to Safe Superintelligence, even Thinking Machines Lab. This is where things get interesting. It seems as though Apple and Meta are looking at some of the same brands. While Apple doesn’t seem to be on any sort of quantifiable hiring spree, they are rumored to also be interested in a significant AI acquisition. I shared my thoughts last week on whether or not I think Apple should indeed make a play for Perplexity, so let’s set that aside and try to get inside the mind of the Cupertino company. What exactly is the plan? If Meta was really behind, then Apple was already even further in the rearview mirror, right? Well, I would present two theories.

1. Apple is truly confident in its current position.

If you watch the interviews that Greg Joswiak and Craig Federighi did at WWDC, you can clearly see that they don’t believe in the same path as other technology companies pursuing AI products. They know they control most of the widget when it comes to our devices and they don’t think they need to rush anything to market. Their sheer size both gives them a sort of moat and the ability to lock in and continue doing what they do best. Could that be overconfidence? Absolutely. But we won’t know that until we see the fruits of their labor, particularly the new Siri whenever it eventually launches.

2. They really are serious about that acquisition.

Instead of trying to hire individual talent, Apple might be looking to do something big in one fell swoop. Whether or not Perplexity is the company they are seriously considering is another question. But Apple could select one startup, grab all of their talent, grab all of their tech, and if they’re in-market, customers too. It would be a massive expense, but it would probably pay off in the end and propel them into a real race with its competitors. Buying Perplexity, which is now valued at $14 billion, would be for more costly than hiring a few big names in the AI space. But the lack of any sort of hiring spree akin to what Meta is doing might signal that it could actually happen. It’s worth noting that these two companies, Apple and Meta, absolutely hate each other. It would be surprising if they weren’t fighting over some of the same assets.

I don’t think Apple should rest on its laurels here. I don’t want them to take the risk of relying on what they already have or even just on partnerships. They need to have their own offerings that can rival the best foundation models or current consumer AI offerings. I fear that they are a tad bit overconfident. But even if the new Siri is on the right track internally, they should be thinking even further ahead. Acquiring an AI lab building foundation models or a consumer product brand like Perplexity feels like a necessity. Whether or not they want to hear it is another story. If they won’t do that, they need to fight for these hires.