Apple has one heck of a mulligan coming ahead of its 50th anniversary in 2026.

After failing on its promise to launch an artificial intelligence-supercharged version of Siri in March, Apple said it’s on track to make it happen in the new year.

The stakes are enormous.

Apple’s AI failure this year put even more pressure on it to deliver a breakthrough AI experience on the iPhone. Another whiff like that will only cement the idea that Apple is woefully behind its peers in AI and risks losing control over the next major computing platform to a rival like Google
or a startup like OpenAI.

Not only that, Apple must prove to investors that AI can generate meaningful sales growth after years of post-pandemic stagnation.

How Apple got here
We knew it was going to be a challenging 2025 for Apple long before the calendar turned over to the new year.

With President Donald Trump’s inauguration looming, no major tech company was more exposed to his impending tariff scheme than Apple.

And then there was the looming AI question.

Apple launched limited features for its Apple Intelligence system in the fall, but the real update, an AI-powered version of Siri that Apple advertised as a key feature in the iPhone 16, was scheduled to launch early in 2025.

Apple shares were reaching new highs in anticipation of a groundbreaking AI experience built into the iPhone.

It was all for nothing.

It took months for Apple CEO Tim Cook to play the politician and woo the president with the promise of $600 billion in U.S. investments over the next four years, culminating in a stunning moment in the Oval Office when Cook gave the president a glass trophy with a solid gold base.

The ploy worked.

Even though analysts pointed out most of Cook’s promised spending was already baked in, the president thought it was good enough. Trump dropped his demands for Apple to build iPhones on U.S. soil and gave Cook the tariff relief he wanted.

With the tariff problem out of the way, Apple shares surged. The stock is up about 35% since that show in the Oval Office.