Apple’s Big Announcements, The Bull Case for Chips, and Under-the-Radar AI Plays 6/8/26

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**Kelly Evans** (0:58)
You're listening to The Exchange. Here's today's show.
Thank you very much, Scott. Our coverage of the Apple event continues as it kicks off this hour. Welcome to The Exchange, I'm Kelly Evans. Let's take a quick look at stocks, especially tech stocks, which are rebounding today, as the tech trade bounces back. As we wait for outgoing CEO Tim Cook to take the stage one last time, will it come with a much-needed wow factor on the AI front? Well, Apple shares haven't needed it. They've gained ground, going from worst to neck and neck for first with Google and the Mag7, in terms of performance and size. Apple has even surpassed Google in market cap, adding a trillion and a half since last year's, even if you called it disappointing, WWDC. But still, it's not winning the AI narrative. And with that, let's go live to Cupertino with Mackenzie Segalos for more on what's at stake today.
Mackenzie, we'll circle back in a moment. Let's start with the panel. And we just heard from Mack, so that's fine. For our first panel, joining me now is Doug Clinton. He's the managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management. Mark Newman, Senior Analyst at Bernstein, and John Belton, Growth Equities Portfolio Manager, Acabele Funds. John, kick things off for us. What are your expectations?

**John Belton** (2:10)
Well, thanks Kelly. I think this is a pretty important WWDC. The last year was, I'd say, more of a transition year. This year, Tim Cook's last WWDC, I think they are going to lay out the new revamped Siri platform. We'll figure out if that really is a platform or just a feature. I think they're going to lay out a vision for how they fit into the agentic AI era. That's what I'm looking for from a high level.

**Kelly Evans** (2:34)
But as a shareholder, I don't mean to say do you care, of course you care, but look at the performance as they've sat on the sidelines, watching everybody pouring money. Look at last week alone, 85 billion from Google, whatever meta is going to end up doing to tap the markets in order to fund its build up. Apple is just sitting back.

**John Belton** (2:51)
It's working for them so far. I think the market likes that Apple's capital light approach, take advantage of all that they've built, the distribution that they have across billions of users. They should be able to distribute AI technology to their users, and I think that's the approach they've taken. They have been doing some things behind the scenes as well, but I think the first era of AI, the generative AI era, I think kind of passed Apple by. I think the hope is that they really catch up during the agentic AI era.

**Kelly Evans** (3:22)
Mark, you agree with that? How do you get to 350?

**Mark Newman** (3:27)
Yeah, I do. I think this capital light approach actually is the right approach. What they're doing is they're partnering with Google to get access to the latest and greatest model.
We're going to find out more about that today.
But they're only spending $14 billion a year with CapEx versus these hyperscalers spending $200 billion of CapEx and every year it's growing up. I think Apple's positioning is very strong. Being the leader in smartphones, I think no company is better positioned in the world than Apple for consumer AI, if they get it right. We're going to hear more today about that, about Gemini powered Siri and the extensions framework. I think if they get this right, they're going to have the right to win here in AI for consumers.

**Kelly Evans** (4:14)
Did you say it's $14 billion or $40 billion a year, Mark and CapEx?

**Mark Newman** (4:18)
That's about $14 billion a year there about per year for CapEx.

**Kelly Evans** (4:22)
$14, $1.4, that's why I wanted to make sure I heard you correctly. Do you think that number would eventually rise or no?