Apple made $900M from generative AI apps in 2025 while rivals spend billions on infrastructure

Apple made roughly $900M from generative AI apps in 2025 - 9to5Mac

Between January and August 2025, App Store revenue from generative AI apps nearly tripled, largely driven by ChatGPT subscriptions. Here are the details. According to a new report by AppMagic (via WSJ), "Apple's revenue from GenAI apps rose from about $35 million in January 2025 to a high of $101 million in August," before trending back down due to a decline in downloads of ChatGPT. And speaking of ChatGPT, AppMagic says that OpenAI's chatbot accounted for nearly 75% of the total commission gains from generative apps on the App Store, followed by Grok, at 5%. As the WSJ notes, that's a notable sum for a company that still lacks a true rival to ChatGPT and similar products, and a welcome buffer as Apple works out its partnership with Google to have Gemini work as the underlying technology of the revamped Siri: Its Siri chatbot is still weak by modern AI standards. What Apple does have that the other AI players don't is a dominant position making devices. However fancy OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and xAI make their chatbots, iPhones are still a primary way to deliver them to consumers. And Apple's AI plan runs counter to strategies of competitors that are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on chips and data centers to build frontier large language models. Apple is spending a fraction of that, aiming instead to use all the personal information people store on their iPhones together with chips it designs itself to power an on-device AI strategy. Neither Apple nor Google has discussed the financial terms of their partnership, but Bloomberg reported last year that it would be a "about $1 billion a year" deal. Ironically, it looks like this price tag may effectively be funded by Google's own competition on the App Store.

Apple Made Nearly $900 Million From Generative AI Apps Last Year

Apple collected nearly $900 million in App Store fees from generative AI apps in 2025, according to data from analysis firm AppMagic, covered by The Wall Street Journal ($). The overwhelming majority of Apple's AI app commission revenue came courtesy of ChatGPT downloads leading to subsequent subscriptions, which alone accounted for around 75 percent of the above total. Elon Musk's Grok app came a distant second, making up just 5 percent of the revenue. Apple is now said to be on course to earn $1 billion in generative app revenue this year. Given how behind the company is in the AI race, highlighted by the sluggish progress of its enhanced Siri rollout, it's a tidy sum indeed. Of course, the reason Apple benefits from the popularity of AI apps built by other companies is that the iPhone remains the smartphone market leader. Most AI apps still have to go through its App Store, where Apple takes a commission of up to 30 percent on subscriptions. As the report notes: "Its Siri chatbot is still weak by modern AI standards. What Apple does have that the other AI players don't is a dominant position making devices. However fancy OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and xAI make their chatbots, iPhones are still a primary way to deliver them to consumers." The revenue stands in contrast to Apple's relatively modest AI spending compared to rivals like Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta, all of whom have poured tens of billions into AI infrastructure, with little to no profit yet to show for it. Meanwhile, Apple's capital expenditures have remained comparatively flat, thanks to its prioritization of investment in on-device AI over large data centers filled with GPU processors. The strategy won't enable a more capable Siri, but Apple appears to be happy to lean on Google to provide the necessary AI infrastructure for that. The two companies announced in January that Gemini will power a revamped version of Apple's virtual assistant, coming later this year. The financial terms of the partnership haven't been disclosed, but Bloomberg reported last year that the deal would be around $1 billion annually. That will give Apple access to a 1.2 trillion parameter model that dwarfs its in-house capabilities. Perhaps the deeper irony is that Google already pays Apple around $20 billion per year to remain the default search engine on iPhones, so now money is flowing in the other direction too, albeit at a drastically lower rate. Still, some investors see the App Store approach as a more viable long-term strategy. Charles Rinehart, chief investment officer of Johnson Asset Management, told WSJ that if Apple "can act as a toll road for providers of AI, then they'll probably end up looking good long-term."