It isn’t.
Every advanced AI system depends on a single physical bottleneck buried deep in the semiconductor supply chain.
For years, this constraint went largely unnoticed. Today, it’s becoming decisive.
- Governments are reviewing it.
- Technology companies are securing long-term access.
- And the companies most exposed to it are already in plain sight.
Click here to get the report
Magnificent 7 Breakdown: Part 3
And so, the final part of our series on the seven biggest companies in the world begins.
Today’s edition: Apple (AAPL) and Meta (META), who possibly have the largest difference in approach to AI out of the entire Mag 7.
Without further ado, let’s get started.
Not financial advice. Always do your own research. Past performance doesn't guarantee future results.
Apple (AAPL)
The name of the game with all the members of the Magnificent 7 has been capex (capital expenditure): spend as much as you can on developing AI data centers or you’ll be left behind.
Apparently, Apple missed that memo. Their capex actually went down last quarter. A lot of people ridiculed them for it at first. What the heck were they thinking?
…But now the question is more like “Oh, were they the smartest ones in the room the whole time?”
Apple’s real AI bet: Just like everyone else, Apple thinks that AI is the future. However, unlike everyone else, Apple doesn’t seem to believe that it needs to be the one to pay for AI to become the future. Their model seems to be “wait and see who comes out on top in the AI race, then use their model on our devices.” And for a device-selling company… that seems like a pretty genius play in retrospect.
(Also, Apple does have some of its own data centers, but it saves money by using its own M-series chips in them, keeping capex even lower!)
Gemini in Siri: To the above point, Apple is already planning to upgrade Siri by integrating Google’s Gemini into it. Which makes a ton of sense; why pour $100 billion a year into AI development when you could pay a fee to just use someone else’s?
Beyond iPhones: iPhone sales are still doing great, but Apple isn’t content with just phones. The current devices it’s working on: N50 Smart Glasses and… camera-equipped AirPods. And maybe an Apple Intelligence pendant? Look, we aren’t sure how these devices will pan out, but it’s still true that Warren Buffett has famously viewed AAPL not as a tech company, but as a consumer goods company. And wow, did this consumer goods company make Buffett a lot of money.
Meta (META)
So, there’s Apple, who’s essentially a non-player in the AI spending race.
And then there’s META, who’s spending up to $135 billion in capex in 2026.
An unbelievable number, but when you have the cash and the revenue generation to throw those numbers around, it starts to make a bit more sense.
The pivot of pivots: It’s obvious at this point that Meta isn’t just a social media company; it’s now an infrastructure monster with a top-tier, open AI model, a revenue-generating AI-based ad machine, and a portfolio of apps to run and test those ads on.
Zuck’s AI plan: Overall, it seems that Zuckerberg’s plan with AI is to make his Llama models the industry standard by giving it away for free. Don’t be alarmed, this isn’t some act of kindness or charity… by making his AI model “open-weights,” Zuck has taken out smaller competitors and put serious pressure on bigger opponents who don’t give away such things for free. The goal here is to steer the entire industry toward Llama 4 as their go-to base layer. If you’d like to see more, here are rankings for the top 100+ AI models by performance.
Key point: Llama 4 now has a 10-million token context window, is like if you could copy and paste multiple novels into your ChatGPT text box and the AI model would still comprehend and intake all of it properly. Huge deal in the AI world!
Saving chip costs: Meta has also recently started to break away from its reliance on Nvidia (who sells industry-standard but extremely expensive chips) to rent Google’s TPU chips and to buy chips from AMD.
The glasses: And, in the one way that Meta and Apple are similar to one another, Zuckerberg has a glasses product as well: the Ray-Ban Meta Glasses. While no one knows if these glasses will really and truly take off, what we can say is that Meta decidedly has the first-mover advantage in the AI wearables market.
Bottom Line
So, there you have it: Apple and Meta have vastly different approaches to the AI boom, but both are quite crafty and strategic in how they’re going about things. That should probably be a given, as these are two of the largest companies in the world, but still.
Apple wants to capitalize on other companies’ AI development while continuing to do well in the consumer goods market.
Meta wants to have the go-to AI model and take out competition at the knees with its open weights Llama models.
We hope this was a helpful series! Let us know if we should do more like this.
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🫡 See You Next Week
That’s all for today’s special edition. We hope you got value from it—reply and let us know if you did.
Until next week,
— Brandon & Blake
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