The behind the scenes journalistic recaps of Apple’s AI drama continues today at The New York Times. And in this latest report, blame for Apple’s struggles to compete in AI is assigned to a surprising source: Luca Maestri and budget.
Maestri scaled GPU purchase plans way back in early 2023, harming Apple’s AI efforts
Today Tripp Mickle at The New York Times has published a wide-ranging report outlining Apple’s struggles in AI, Siri, the Vision Pro, and more. It covers much of the same ground as yesterday’s The Information report, but there is an especially interesting new tidbit around Apple’s slow AI start.
John Giannandrea, Apple’s AI head, reportedly sought approval in early 2023 to upgrade the company’s GPU arsenal and faced some pushback.
Tripp Mickle writes at The New York Times:
At the time, Apple’s data centers had about 50,000 GPUs that were more than five years old — far fewer than the hundreds of thousands of chips being bought at the time by A.I. leaders like Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta, these people said.
Mr. Cook approved a plan to double the team’s chip budget, but Apple’s finance chief, Luca Maestri, reduced the increase to less than half that, the people said. Mr. Maestri encouraged the team to make the chips they had more efficient.
It seems remarkable that Maestri would be able to have such a huge impact on Apple’s AI efforts. Especially considering Cook gave his own approval.
Mickle continues:
The lack of GPUs meant the team developing A.I. systems had to negotiate for data center computing power from its providers like Google and Amazon, two of the people said. The leading chips made by Nvidia were in such demand that Apple used alternative chips made by Google for some of its A.I. development.
9to5Mac’s Take
Maestri is Apple’s longtime CFO who recently stepped into a reduced role, likely as part of a slow retirement plan.
While Maestri’s oversight of Apple’s finances makes him an important voice in the decision to increase GPU investment, it’s wild that such a seemingly short-sighted move happened so recently.
Top comment by Metropolitan89
So a CFO curbed massive investment into something that back then showed every sign of tech bubble? In a company that has enough cash to invest if/when the tech proves that it's worth pursuing "at all costs".
They clearly lost some on the stocks market volatile reaction, but are still very stable company. And so far LLMs didn't prove to be the revolution some expected (yet?).
So, I guess it´s still too soon to judge if it was a good or bad move.
Apple’s growing R&D spend over the years, the importance of AI, and the company’s huge cash flow all make a simple budget dispute seem hard to believe.
Not that this one decision can be entirely blamed for Apple’s slow AI uptake, of course. Mickle also highlights leadership struggles between Robby Walker, who formerly led Siri, and Sebastien Marineau-Mes, a senior executive in software.
However, such a big scale back on what Giannandrea was asking for seems like an especially big error, in hindsight.
How much do you think this GPU budget reduction hurt Apple’s AI efforts? Let us know in the comments.
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