Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said the company will “significantly grow” its spending on artificial intelligence and is “very open” to acquisitions of any size that could accelerate its product roadmap. Speaking after fiscal third-quarter results, Cook disclosed Apple has already bought about seven firms this year—none large—but added that the iPhone maker, with roughly $133 billion in cash, is prepared to write bigger checks than its historic $3 billion purchase of Beats in 2014. Cook said Apple will boost capital spending on data-centre capacity and has reassigned staff to AI projects, marking a break from the firm’s traditionally cautious outlays. Chief Financial Officer Kevan Parekh told analysts that capital expenditure will “grow substantially,” though not exponentially. The push comes as rivals pour far more into the field: Alphabet plans roughly $85 billion in capex over the next year and Microsoft is on pace to spend more than $100 billion, largely for AI infrastructure. In a rare all-hands meeting the day after the earnings call, Cook rallied employees around the effort, calling the AI revolution “as big or bigger” than the internet and smartphones and insisting “Apple must do this.” Bloomberg reported the company has internally discussed potential deals for startups such as Perplexity and Mistral, but no timetable was given. Cook reiterated that Apple’s in-house chips and commitment to privacy would remain central to its AI strategy.