April 12, 2025 – A recent blog post by The New York Times has shed light on Apple’s perceived sluggishness in artificial intelligence (AI) development, attributing part of the delay to Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri’s cost-cutting measures in 2023. According to the report, Apple engineers proposed doubling their budget for GPU acquisitions to accelerate AI feature development, a plan initially approved by CEO Tim Cook.
However, Maestri vetoed the request, a move that reportedly undermined Cook’s authority and tightened the company’s financial reins. The decision, justified at the time by less intense AI competition, ultimately halved GPU-related spending, forcing Apple’s AI team to pivot strategies.
To compensate, the team collaborated with Google and Amazon to access their data centers and relied on limited Nvidia processor supplies for select projects. Maestri urged efficiency in resource utilization, though this failed to fully address hardware constraints.
The report also critiques Cook’s leadership, suggesting his reluctance to provide clear product direction—a legacy tied to late co-founder Steve Jobs’ characterization of him as a “non-product-focused manager”—has stymied AI progress. While Apple’s financial prudence may have been defensible in 2023, the evolving AI landscape now highlights the trade-offs of such caution.
