Tech bull Daniel Ives has urged Tim Cook’s Apple Inc. AAPL to make quick moves and acquire Perplexity AI for its search engine.
What Happened: Stating that Apple was kind of a “yawner” at the WWDC 2025 event, Dan Ives said the iPhone maker needs to “make a move,” in an interview with CNBC during its ‘Power Lunch’ program.
He said that Apple’s “treadmill approach” needs to end, and it needs to eye a big splashing partnership with either Perplexity or Anthropic.
While Ives has previously mentioned that he expects Apple to consider acquiring Perplexity, he said in this latest conversation that “It’s a matter of when and not if, in other words, Apple needs to make a move, and it’s clear. Perplexity to me seems like a no-brainer, relative to how it would fit.”
“Look, it’s about the developers. If you look at OpenAI, if you look at Google, if you look at Microsoft, they (Apple) need to get into the game. That is something that can’t be done in Cupertino,” he added.
He also reiterated his belief in positive upward momentum in Apple’s stock by saying that “The reason the stock can go up in the second half of the year is that I think Apple is going to make a move. I know they still haven’t done an acquisition since Beats, being the biggest one, but now is the time for Cook and Cupertino to move away from the treadmill approach.”
See Also: Jim Cramer Says ‘Apple Buyback Is Not Working Right Now,’ Michael Saylor Quips Tim Cook’s Company ‘Should Buy Bitcoin’
Why It Matters: In an X post from June 10, Jim Cramer also advocated for more ambitious capital allocation strategies for Apple.
“I have to be critical and say they should buy Perplexity,” he stated.
His advice is driven by the expected U.S. government antitrust decision against Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG GOOGL Google by August 2025, which could disrupt Google’s default search agreements with Apple’s Safari browser.
Such a change would enable Apple to adopt Perplexity’s conversational AI to enhance its competitiveness in the rapidly changing search market, Cramer explained.
Price Action: Shares of Apple were up 0.76% in premarket on Wednesday after ending 1.29% higher on Tuesday. It fell by 14.78% on a year-to-date basis and 5.65% over the past year.
Benzinga Edge Stock Rankings shows that Apple had a weaker price trend over the medium and long term but a stronger trend over the short term. Its momentum ranking was poor, and its value ranking was also bad at the 9.05th percentile. The details of other metrics are available here.
The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY and Invesco QQQ Trust ETF QQQ, which track the S&P 500 index and Nasdaq 100 index, respectively, edged slightly higher on Wednesday. The SPY was up 0.097% at $618.25, while the QQQ advanced 0.05% to $547.27, according to Benzinga Pro data.
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