The 5 Companies Apple Must Buy

The episode’s central argument was that Apple should consider larger acquisitions instead of relying mainly on stock buybacks and small technical-team deals, such as those associated with Siri and Touch ID. The proposed test was whether a target could strengthen experiences across the iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch, AirPods, or Apple stores. The speaker urged John Ternes, described as Apple’s new CEO, to pursue companies that could add meaningful capabilities or services, while the varied nominations showed that there was no single agreed-upon acquisition strategy.

ElevenLabs was proposed to make Siri more capable at voice-based messaging, dictation, and email; one picker said its voice tools were far ahead of alternatives they had tried. Its valuation was estimated at roughly $5 billion to $10 billion. Disney was pitched as a way to connect a powerful entertainment brand and park experiences with Apple One, devices, and stores, including through Disney content and products; its market capitalization was cited at $182 billion. Sony was another content-and-services candidate, with PlayStation, film, television, music, and anime assets including Crunchyroll. Its roughly $134 billion to $135 billion market capitalization was contrasted with Apple’s $4.96 trillion. The case for Sony was that it could help Apple become a major anime distributor and a Netflix rival.

Boston Dynamics was proposed as a physical-world complement to Apple’s AI, based on the view that computing is expanding beyond desks, faces, and hands toward motion. Lance Seidman argued that Apple might eventually need a robot, possibly an “Apple A1,” and that its brand could help people trust a robot in their homes. Other AI suggestions targeted different gaps: Perplexity could provide an agent able to reach beyond Apple’s ecosystem, act as a model router, and offer a search alternative if Apple’s Google default-search deal ends. World Labs was nominated for spatial intelligence, while Prism ML was suggested for shrinking larger models so they can run locally.

Etched was proposed as an AI-chip acquisition focused on inference across Apple devices and servers. The speaker said Apple relies on Nvidia chips and that its existing server-side Apple Silicon was not designed for the relevant workloads, citing a reported Etched valuation of about $21 billion and Apple’s roughly $250 billion in cash. Liquid AI was another local-model candidate, with models designed around constraints such as latency, power, compute, and network access. These proposals reflect different possible bottlenecks—chips, models, or access to outside services—rather than a single settled view of what Apple most needs to acquire.

DigitalOcean was pitched as a route into cloud hosting for apps and software, using its developer base and brand trust. The speaker estimated a $10 billion to $20 billion valuation, a purchase price of around $25 billion after a premium, and the potential to grow into a $50 billion to $100 billion revenue business. Superhuman, including Grammarly, was proposed to improve Apple’s writing, email, and productivity apps across iPhones and Macs. Other ideas included Sonos to link Apple Music, Siri, Apple TV, and home automation, and Kagi as a privacy-focused paid-search service. Kristen Dahl estimated that 99% of Apple users still use Google and said the search experience had declined significantly. Lucid was chosen over Rivian in what the picker called a close, coin-toss decision, while another speaker called local AI the strongest opportunity.