Apple to Test Artificial Intelligence Services on Servers Manufactured by Foxconn

According to Taiwan’s Economic Daily News (via South China Morning Post), Foxconn will provide Apple with an exclusive supply of dedicated servers that will be used to train and test artificial intelligence services.

Diversifying Supply Chain

As part of Apple’s attempt to diversify its supply chain away from China, the company has decided that the servers would be manufactured in Vietnam. Foxconn supplies servers for artificial intelligence applications to Amazon, OpenAI, and Nvidia. Apple already relies primarily on Foxconn as its principal supplier of servers for its data centers.

A report by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman from the previous month said that Apple was working on artificial intelligence initiatives under the codename “Apple GPT” that may compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Gurman argues that Apple does not yet have any definite plans but does not yet have a “clear strategy” for building a product for consumers. While Apple may be preparing to make a “significant” AI announcement in 2024, Gurman claims that Apple does not yet have any specific plans. The analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes that Apple is substantially behind its competitors in developing its generative AI technology, and there is no indication that the firm intends to deploy AI services in the coming year.

Apple’s Focus on AI

Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, stated that artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are “core fundamental technologies integral to virtually every product” that Apple develops during the company’s earnings call last week. Artificial intelligence appears to be “absolutely critical” to Apple since Tim Cook has confirmed that the company has been researching generative AI “for years.”