Apple's relationship with artificial intelligence has reached a pivotal moment as the company significantly expands its OpenAI partnership in iOS 26, according to recent Stratechery analysis.
The deepening collaboration, announced at Apple's 2025 Worldwide Developers Conference, represents more than just a feature update—it signals a fundamental strategic repositioning. Industry analyst Ben Thompson encourages Apple to "double-down on being the best hardware for what appears to be the dominant consumer AI company" rather than competing directly with OpenAI's AI capabilities.
The partnership brings several immediate benefits to iOS 26 users. Apple's visual intelligence feature will analyze images and text on iPhone screens, with users able to ask ChatGPT for additional information about what they're viewing. The integration extends to Apple's development environment, with Xcode 26 incorporating ChatGPT to help developers write code, create documentation, and fix errors.
This strategic pivot comes at a critical time. OpenAI recently acquired Jony Ive's hardware company io for approximately $6.4 billion, bringing Apple's former design chief and several key Apple veterans into its fold. The acquisition signals OpenAI's ambition to create AI-focused hardware that could potentially compete with traditional devices like smartphones.
Thompson suggests Apple's best path forward is to embrace this changing landscape by expanding beyond phones to develop "a host of AI-powered devices including the Apple Watch, HomePod, glasses, etc." This approach would position Apple to provide "better hardware and bigger scale than the horizontal services company [OpenAI] can build on their own."
The stakes are high. Apple services chief Eddy Cue acknowledged in recent court testimony that "you may not need an iPhone 10 years from now," calling AI a "huge technological shift." As OpenAI and other companies race to define the next generation of computing devices, Apple's strategic partnership may be both defensive and forward-looking—ensuring it remains relevant in an AI-first future while leveraging its hardware expertise to create new categories of AI-powered products.