
Is DeepSeek a big benefit for Apple? Cook said this in the earnings call

At the Apple investor conference call, CEO Tim Cook affirmed the efficiency improvements and innovations brought by DeepSeek. Cook emphasized the close integration of Apple's hardware and software, and continued to maintain a prudent capital expenditure strategy. Bank of America Merrill Lynch believes that the technological advancements of DeepSeek will optimize Apple's edge AI applications, enhance user experience, and help integrate more AI features into its products, strengthening market competitiveness
How will DeepSeek's innovation impact Apple?
After the U.S. stock market closed on Thursday, January 30th, during a conference call with Apple investors, Apple CEO Tim Cook affirmed DeepSeek's innovations in reducing the training and operational costs of its V3 model, as well as the resulting efficiency improvements:
“Overall, I think innovations that drive efficiency are a good thing, and you see that in that model.”
At the same time, Cook also mentioned Apple's advantages in hardware and software integration, as well as its continued prudent capital expenditure strategy:
“Our tightly integrated hardware and software will continue to bring us good benefits. As you know, our approach is to perform AI processing on the device and combine it with a private cloud architecture, which architecturally simulates what happens on the device.”
“From a capital expenditure perspective, we have always taken a very prudent and thoughtful approach to spending, and we continue to leverage a hybrid model, which I believe will continue to bring us good benefits.”
The market generally believes that the significant reduction in AI model development costs is favorable for Apple. According to a previous article by Wall Street Insights, Bank of America Merrill Lynch believes that if DeepSeek's technology can truly reduce the costs of AI inference and improve the quality and speed of inference, then edge AI applications will benefit the most, providing multiple advantages for Apple.
First, Apple's edge AI applications will be further optimized, enhancing user experience. Second, as costs decrease, Apple can integrate more AI features into its products, such as smartphones and AR glasses. This will position Apple more favorably in future market competition as the ultimate choice with a “pocket-sized LLM.”
On Thursday, Apple's stock price fell 0.74%, but in after-hours trading, it rose over 3%.