AI Daily: WWDC to focus on redesigns as Apple lags in AI

Catch up on the top artificial intelligence news and commentary by Wall Street analysts on publicly traded companies in the space with this daily recap compiled by The Fly:

SIDELINED ON AI: Apple’s (AAPL) upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference will do little to assuage fears that the iPhone maker is a laggard in AI, Blomberg’s Mark Gurman reports. Instead, the event will focus on design and productivity enhancements for its long-established operating system franchises. The company’s keynote address will introduce redesigned software interfaces for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and Apple Watch, in addition to more minor tweaks to the Vision Pro headset. As part of the end-to-end overhaul, the company is also making a sweeping change to its software branding, which will shift from version numbers to a year-based system. That means Apple will introduce iOS 26, iPadOS 26, tvOS 26, visionOS 26, macOS 26 and watchOS 26 – named for 2026. Internally, the operating systems are known as Luck, Charisma, Discovery, Cheer and Nepali, respectively, the author notes. The AI changes will be surprisingly minor and are “unlikely to impress” industry watchers, especially considering the rapid pace of innovation by Alphabet’s (GOOGL) Google, Meta Platforms (META), Microsoft (MSFT) and OpenAI, the publication adds.

Apple’s upcoming conference is expected to demonstrate how far behind the company is in the AI sector, Dan Gallagher of The Wall Street Journal reports. The Apple Intelligence service introduced at last year’s conference is still being worked on and the Siri digital assistant is waiting for a previously announced AI makeover. Additionally, on top of its issues with AI, Apple is facing significant problems with tariffs threatening its profit margin and U.S. President Donald Trump pressuring the company to undo its two-decade-old business model of exclusively producing overseas.

ROBOTAXI ROAD TESTING: Pony.AI (PONY) is ramping up its Robotaxi mass production and commercialization efforts with the launch of public road testing for its seventh-generation Robotaxis in China. The vehicles now testing on roads in the southern Chinese megacities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen are based on Guangzhou Auto’s second-generation Aion V model and equipped with Pony.AI’s most advanced autonomous driving system, unveiled just over a month ago at the Shanghai Auto Show. Pony.ai recently obtained regulatory permit to conduct these road tests for its seventh generation Robotaxi jointly developed with GAC, marking a significant transition from laboratory and closed-track validation into real-world traffic environments.

UNTETHER AI ACQUISITION: Untether AI, a developer of AI inference chips marketed as faster and more energy-efficient than rival products for edge environments and enterprise data centers, announced that it has entered into a transaction with AMD (AMD). “As a result of the transaction, Untether AI will no longer be supplying or supporting our speedAI products and imAIgine Software Development Kit. While today marks the end of Untether AI’s journey, we are proud of the pioneering research that underpinned our work in advancing state-of-the-art AI chip technology. We are grateful for the dedication of our team and the support of our customers, partners, and investors. We look forward to the contributions our world-class team will make with AMD.”

AI EFFORTS: Wells Fargo raised the firm’s price target on Shopify (SHOP) to $125 from $107 and keeps an Overweight rating on the shares. While not typically perceived as an AI play, the firm believes Shopify’s AI efforts are differentiated and can serve as another important growth and efficiency driver for years to come.