AI’s iPhone Moment
AI’s iPhone Moment
Next week is when Apple gets serious about AI. Or more to the point, next week is when Apple shows the world how serious it’s been about AI for several years now.
You might think Apple is behind the curve. After all, Apple doesn’t make BIG HONKING AI HEADLINES day after day the way that Nvidia, Microsoft and Google do.
But that’s not the Apple way — as Paradigm AI authority James Altucher explained in this space two years ago.
“Apple is taking a slower and more cautious approach to releasing customer-facing applications of AI,” he said.
“Apple has a history of waiting to optimize new technologies before releasing them to the market. Apple’s slow delivery in the AI space would suggest the company believes today’s AI technology does not meet its standards and that there's more innovation that can be squeezed out to produce the perfect product.”
This has long been the Apple way: Let Sony screw up a digital music player… while Apple quietly perfects the iPod. Let BlackBerry and Palm make the early mistakes on a smartphone… while Apple refines the iPhone so it’s a must-have item from Day 1.
And so it goes here. Apple’s looking pretty smart right around now compared with the so-called hyperscalers like Microsoft and Google.
The hyperscalers are spending like mad on data centers — at a pace they’ve never spent in their history.
To finance it, they’re taking on gobs of new debt — and in the case of Google this week, issuing $80 billion in new shares.
Look at the growth trajectory posted on social media just this morning…
Apple is taking an entirely different approach — AI on your device.
And the wraps finally come off next week during Apple’s big annual WWDC event — the Worldwide Developers Conference.
It could be nothing less than the “iPhone Moment” for AI — you know, that day in 2007 when Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone to the world.
What’s in the works is something that Altucher Confidential readers have been hip to since late March — and that got mainstream confirmation last week from Bloomberg.
On the one hand, it’s tempting to call it a souped-up Siri — but that totally undersells the level of transformation.
Apple’s aim is nothing less than to bring “agentic AI” to the masses.
In theory, AI agents are supposed to — for example — rebook your cancelled flight plus a rideshare plus a hotel and notify your family and work colleagues in less time than it takes you now to pull up your airline’s app or walk to a help desk.
So far, it works better in theory than in practice. But Apple intends to make it real, and make it simple.
Again, Apple is biding its time to get everything right — and irresistible.
What’s more, the hardware and computing power making it all possible? It won’t reside in a distant data center. It’ll be right there on your phone.
Of course, Apple can’t pull off something this ambitious by itself… and James Altucher says he’s found “hard evidence that a small, $1 billion company is behind Apple’s big push into AI.
“This is not public knowledge. Neither Apple, nor this company, have confirmed this partnership. But I found the smoking gun.
“It basically proves Apple is working with this company. And quite frankly, I think this has the makings of my next 1,000% winner.”
James’ Microcap Millionaire readers are already clued in to the identity of this company. If you’re not among them, you owe it to yourself to follow this link. Because once everyone else figures it out during WWDC next Monday, it’ll be too late to maximize the profit potential. Give it a look now.
95 Days and Counting
U.S. oil futures sit at $92 this morning — giving up none of yesterday’s monster gains.
As mentioned at the conclusion of yesterday’s edition, Iranian leaders are fed up that Israel continues to bomb Lebanon — so they’ve broken off their indirect talks with the United States.
Today is Day 95 of the war and Day 56 of a tenuous ceasefire.
“When the war started on Feb. 28, President Trump said that it would be over quickly because of massive U.S. bombardment and the killing of practically all of Iran’s religious, military and civilian leaders,” says Paradigm macroeconomics authority Jim Rickards.
So as long as the stalemate drags on, “It appears that Trump is engaged in a protracted propaganda effort. He's trying to prop up support for the war among the American people and in Congress. He’s trying to keep the negotiations alive by combining his happy talk with threats to resume large-scale attacks on Iran if they don’t make his claims come true.
“Most of all, Trump seems to be trying to boost the stock market and lower gasoline prices by painting a picture of a world where the war is over soon.”
But after 95 days, Jim says bluntly that “the Trump show is getting old. He’s losing credibility. Markets may soon reprice for the reality, which is a far cry from Trump’s claims.
“Investors are not ready for this. They should be.”
Program note: We’re less than 48 hours away from a special LIVE and FREE briefing that Jim Rickards and his team are hosting ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday.
They’ll gather not far from Independence Hall in Philadelphia on Thursday at 1:00 p.m. EDT.
“The headlines are moving fast,” says Jim — “but underneath the surface, far bigger forces are beginning to collide.”
Among the topics on the agenda…
- Inflation and its impact on Americans
- Energy markets and the Strait of Hormuz crisis
- Gold, commodities and hard assets
- America First policies and resource independence
- Key sectors and investment themes we believe could outperform ahead.
Yes, there will be names and ticker symbols — so make sure you can take notes.
And no, we won’t try to sell you anything — so you don’t have to keep your wallet handy.
You can check out the full agenda and reserve your spot when you click here on our special event page.
And now back to the Persian Gulf for Bullet No. 3…
Barnacleypse Now
Even if the Strait of Hormuz reopens tomorrow, it will take months to unsnarl global supply chains — a process that will include cleaning barnacles off oil tankers and cargo ships.
Yes, barnacles.
“Who knew that mooring your tanker or cargo ship idle in the warm Persian Gulf for three months could encourage growth of… barnacles?” says Paradigm oil expert (and 30-year Navy veteran) Byron King.
And that’s just the propeller, not the hull…
[Photo posted by the shipping-data firm Marhelm on X]
“And now it dawns upon shippers everywhere that we have hundreds of vessels unfit to sail because their hulls are fouled. Worse, even the propellers are encrusted. And no ship is going anywhere with this kind of crud on the propulsive mechanisms.”
Or if they can, by one estimate their fuel economy is cut by 40–80%.
“Seriously,” Byron goes on, “this is not a minor issue; there's no quick-fix solution because hull cleaning requires (not cheap) drydocking, and/or well-trained diving teams with specific kinds of mechanical equipment. It's not free, not by any means.
“And then we have the ‘environmental’ angle, which mandates hull-cleaning permits because this stuff is gunky and the residue must go somewhere... even in the Middle East.
“Point is... ‘reopening’ the Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz is not a simple task. There's no such thing as just ‘turning the key,’ cranking up the ship and sailing oil, LNG and other cargos through the passageway and out onto the high seas.”
But barnacles are the furthest thing from Mr. Market’s mind on this Tuesday.
All the major U.S. stock indexes are in the green and in record territory, the S&P 500 now over 7,600. The big buzzy story of the day is Claude maker Anthropic filing its plans to go public. No date is set yet but it will be the second mega-IPO of the year after SpaceX and before OpenAI.
The Paradigm editors have racked up a string of winners for their readers in the last 24 hours…
- 101% on Unity Software calls in Altucher’s True Alpha
- 20% on a leveraged Microsoft ETF and 30% on Atlassian shares in Enrique Abeyta’s The Maverick… plus nearly 100% gains in a week on Atlassian call options
- 328% on Rivian calls and 700% on Apple calls in Chris Cimorelli’s 10X Trade Club… plus a clean 10X on Virgin Galactic calls
Gold is back above $4,500, if barely. But silver is up over a buck to $75.80
Crypto is getting beaten with an ugly stick — Bitcoin approaching three-month lows just over $67,000 and Ethereum clinging to the $1,900 level.
“No one cares about crypto right now,” observes colleague Greg Guenthner at The Trading Desk. “They’re too busy making money in the memory names. We’d be wasting our time trying to pick bottoms in these out-of-favor groups like crypto. Sure, I think they’ll bounce eventually. But right now, the hot money is elsewhere.”
Financial Follies
And now for a case of mistaken identity…
Yep, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic (SPCE) has rallied hard in recent weeks — in large part because “investors” who don’t know any better are plowing money into it thinking they’re buying shares of Elon Musk’s SpaceX (SPCX).
Of course, SPCX doesn’t go public for another 10 days.
- ➢
Note well
- what we mentioned a few moments ago — the 1,000% gains on SPCE call options in our
10X Trade Club
- service. Chris Cimorelli had a solid fundamental case for SPCE back in April — but once in a while it’s better to be lucky than good!
The tweet above implies this is the first time anything like this has happened. Hardly.
Deep in our voluminous archives is an episode from 2013 in which Twitter was about to go public as TWTR — and people who didn’t know any better bid up the shares of Tweeter, a bankrupt electronics retailer trading as TWTRQ.
And in 2021 we drew your attention to academic research demonstrating these “blooper trades” happen way more often than you might think.
What’s more, it seems a lot of them surround Elon Musk, go figure…
Before we move on, a quick 5 Bullets follow-up: Amazon has abandoned its internal leaderboard tracking employees’ use of AI tools.
Last week we told you how Amazon employees are “running up the score” when it comes to AI agents. That is, they’re automating useless tasks just to consume AI tokens — because Amazon was tracking token consumption on internal leaderboards.
Whelp, the leaderboard is no more.
“Please don’t use AI just for the sake of using AI,” says a memo from senior VP Dave Treadwell.
“The move highlights how tech groups’ efforts to encourage the use of AI can lead workers to try to game performance measures with pointless activity,” says the Financial Times — “increasing infrastructure expenses.”
You mean, the “compute” from data centers isn’t an infinite resource? Say it ain’t so!
Which nicely tees up today’s mailbag…
Mailbag: AI Data Center Backlash
On the subject of AI and electricity — and the growing backlash to AI data centers — a reader writes…
“The energy solution is simple. If you build an AI center you mandatorily have to build an energy source to operate it. No plugging into the grid.”
Dave responds: To some extent this is what’s already happening out of necessity — to wit, the natural gas turbines running the Colossus plant in Memphis owned by SpaceX’s xAI division. Or Microsoft’s deal with Constellation Energy to restart the undamaged reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, which was shuttered in 2019.
In a related and unarguably positive development… Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has ordered a pause to the sales tax break that data centers get in the Buckeye state.
When a sales tax exemption was first extended to data centers, the thinking was that the economic growth generated by data centers would be so massive that it would dwarf the $136 million in revenue the state would give up.
But that original $136 million estimate for 2025 turned out to be… $1.5 billion.
(Gee, the state’s bean counters were off by only an order of magnitude…)
“The numbers have triggered a firestorm inside the Ohio Statehouse,” says the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, “as lawmakers from both parties demanded answers about how the estimates ended up so dramatically wrong.”
With any luck, state leaders elsewhere will take Ohio’s cue and stop giving tax breaks and other special favors to the industry. Data centers must compete on the proverbial level playing field.
