Apple Could Win Big With Llama If Tim Swallows His Pride

The Choice Apple Pretends It Has

Last year, Apple rolled out Apple Intelligence at WWDC25 and plastered Craig Federighi on stage next to the words Private Cloud Compute because privacy is the only club Cupertino ever swings these days.

Minutes later Apple confirmed an optional deep ChatGPT integration that routes heavy prompts off device to OpenAI’s GPT.

Bloomberg says the company is still flirting with Anthropic for a back-up plan, so the narrative inside Apple Park is either “we love optionality” or “we still don’t trust Sam Altman.”

Siri started losing the race in 2016 and never stopped.

I think the framing is wrong. Apple isn’t choosing between Claude and ChatGPT.
It’s choosing between clinging to rented brains or owning the whole damn stack.

The Deal Zuck Would Sign Yesterday

Meta dropped Llama 4 in April under a source-available license that basically shouts fork me please.

Speed is solid, weights fit on-device (very important), and the price would be a rounding error... Exactly what Apple’s custom silicon was built to exploit.
Of note, the Scout variant can be quantized to run on a single high-end GPU.

Zuckerberg is on a public mission to bleed OpenAI and Google by making Llama free beer for anyone with GPUs.

A deal with Apple would jam a knife into both rivals at once.

Zuck would take that call. Fast.

The Privacy Play Nobody Talks About

Apple’s Private Cloud Compute already limits data retention and submits its server code for external auditing.

Swap in Llama weights and nothing changes for users except the bill for token inference: it drops to zero.

OpenAI can’t match that promise without rewriting its entire data-hungry business model.

Anthropic claims it can, but it’s still running on Amazon’s servers with a thick NDA duct-taped around the details.

When the press asks for proof, both companies mumble “trust us.”

Apple’s brand revolves around privacy.

Privacy isn’t a feature for Apple. It’s the product that justifies the premium.

The Political Stench

There’s only one real blocker here: history.

Meta lost roughly $10 billion in ad revenue after Apple’s 2021 App Tracking Transparency nuke. Since then the two firms trade EU regulatory jabs like diss tracks.

Inside Apple, partnering with Meta probably feels like hugging the villain from last season’s episode.

Yet every exec who swears they “hate Facebook” still posts stories of their Amalfi vacation on Instagram.

The market doesn’t care about old grudges. It rewards leverage.

Imagine iPhone 17 launching with an Apple-tuned Llama that runs offline, speaks 30 languages, and never leaves your device.

Wall Street would throw rose petals at Tim Cook.

Recent Talent Moves

• Ruoming Pang — former head of Apple’s Foundation Models team — has joined Meta’s Superintelligence Labs in a multi-million-dollar move.
• Alexandr Wang, Nat Friedman, and Daniel Gross have also signed on to co-lead the same unit, underscoring Meta’s INSANE hiring spree.
• Apple announced plans in February 2025 to create 20,000 new U.S. jobs focused on AI and silicon, but has not yet named high-profile replacements for the departing executives.

What Happens If Tim Swallows His Pride

1. Apple stops paying fees to OpenAI (or potentially Anthropic).
2. Llama gets first-class Core ML support and slurps up iOS developer mindshare overnight.
3. Meta scores the ultimate “privacy endorsement” without spending an extra cent on lobbying.
4. Regulators see two U.S. giants cooperating instead of kneecapping each other. Great optics.

They both win.

TLDR

Apple keeps preaching privacy yet rents models from firms that can’t spell p-r-i-v-a-c-y.

The fix is obvious to me. Shake hands with the guy you've been at war with for years, ship Llama tomorrow, and own your AI future.

Will Tim do it, or will ego keep Siri dumb a bit longer?