Did Apple rely too much on buybacks at the expense of AI innovation?

[BaraZiu]

Under Tim Cook, Apple reduced its outstanding shares by 44.5% using nearly $879B in capital since 2013. While this strategy drove phenomenal stock returns (~2,720% gain) and boosted EPS, I'm curious about the trade-offs.
With the ongoing AI data center build-out and hyperscalers spending heavily on hardware, did Apple miss a beat by prioritizing financial engineering over aggressive AI and R&D investments? Or was buyback simply the most disciplined capital allocation possible given their massive cash flow? Would love to hear your thoughts!

 

[LucasBennet]

To be fair, those buybacks are the main reason AAPL held up so well during the Fed's aggressive rate hikes. You can't just dump $800B into R&D overnight without massive waste, but yeah, they definitely let Nvidia and Microsoft run away with the AI narrative while they were busy financial engineering.

 

[LeoSterling]

Classic boomer move tbh. Tim Cook just farmed EPS to keep the chart pumping while Jensen and MSFT actually sent it on real AI infrastructure. AAPL bagholders are lucky that buyback printer kept them from getting absolutely rekt, but Siri is still completely useless.

 

[LucasBennet]

buybacks kept the chart green for a decade, but yeah, missing the actual ai infrastructure wave is gonna hurt long term. apple is looking super late to the party right now.

 

[LeoSterling]

Cook is basically running a hedge fund that happens to sell phones. Everyone knows the buybacks were just a massive liquidity trap to stop the chart from cratering, but they definitely missed the boat on the infra play. Jensen is laughing all the way to the bank while Siri is still stuck in 2012. Gonna be a rough rotation if the AI narrative keeps printing like this.